The Mysteries of Vichy
The situation at Vichy is as potentially important as it is per- sistently obscure. Last Saturday Marshal Petain made an un- expected journey to a small station on the demarcation-line between occupied and unoccupied France, and there received M. Laval in his railway carriage. After the meeting a statement was issued to the effect that all misunderstandings between the two had been dissipated. There, so far, the matter rests. Wash- ington seems to see the affair as a capitulation by Marshal Petain to insistent demands from Berlin or Berchtesgaden, heralding the much-desired collaboration between France and Germany against Great Britain. On the other hand, an official Vichy spokesman declared on Tuesday, in language more ex- plicit than had yet been used, that France would in no circum- stances allow her fleet to be used against her former ally. The assertion does not refer to the use of French ports, but there is no reason to read significance into the omission. Opinion in France generally is believed to be increasingly pro-British, and every successive Italian failure, with its sequel in the assumption of the virtual control of Italy by the Germans, has the effect of arousing fury in France at the idea of any concession to Germany's humiliated ally. The general impression is that while Marshal Petain is still trying to play for time Hitler is trying to get Franco-German relations clarified once for all. That issue is still undecided.
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