I am not suggesting that Marshal Petain is in himself
com- parable to Roberts of Kandahar. The latter had a noble nature : Petain does not possess a noble nature. He was a defeatist in 1917 ; he was jealous of Foch ; he is governed by vanity, pessimism, envy and ambition. I have heard it said that Petain is the only truly happy man in France today. He has now removed from his vicinity the one man whose criticism, even if unspoken, must have been a constant suggestion of reproof. Weygand recalled to him the sturdy patriotism of Foch. He must be glad that Weygand is no longer there to recall the great days, and that he can now settle down to his prizegivings without a spectre of his foolish feasts. How pleasant for this vain man to feel that his words, so long disregarded, are now potent in the history of his country. Yet that is not the point. The point is that he is regarded by many millions of his countrymen as symbolic of the highest French virtues. I do not pretend, moreover, that the French propertied classes share the fine spirit of the French people. I well know that French politics had become septic and that the lobbies of the Chamber of Deputies, and even of the Senate, were dark drains in which the sewer-rats grew fat. I know that those French industrialists who clustered round the 20o families and the Comae des Forges were many of them blinded to patriotism by their terror of the Freemasons and the Jews. I know that there are many ambitious men in France today who . throng the corridors of the Hotel du Parc at Vichy and seek to build their careers upon the ruins of their country's reputation. I am aware that there have been some instances of treachery even among the intellectuals. Drieu la Rochelle, for instance, has allowed the name of the Nouvelle Revue Francaise to be prostituted to the slimy solicitations of Friedrich Sieburg. A few writers, such as Montherlant, have allowed their gifts to serve the t vo defeatist doctrines of the ivory tower and self- humiliation. Yet I also know, in every fibre of my being, that when these men ceased to be patriotic they ceased to be French. I know also that the winds which thunder across the great plains of France will in the end sweep away all such impurities and that the wounds of France, in spite of the filthy cohort of flies that now cluster round them, will not turn gangrenous. They will heal.
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