GENERAL DE GAULLE
SIR, Please accept my sincere congratulations upon your 6,000th issue. May I be allowed a word upon the 5,999th issue in which, in common with many others, you do less than justice to Generll de Gaulle? It has been fairly generally suggested in the Press that he has lately been at fault, but I submit that the public has been given no facts in proof of this. You speak of the General's " intractability," but may not this well be evidence that he will rightly have nothing to do with the already discredited policy of appeasement? First Darlan appears as America's choice and Britain's also, and hardly is he cold in his grave before Peyrouton is installed in a position of authority. True-the latter has gone, too, but after an unconscionable delay. In this dubious " set up " we expect de Gaulle to come td an immediate settlement with the Giraudists and express pained and very " self-righteous " surprise when he does not do so. You remark, it seems to me unfairly, " General Giraud has been organising and commanding armies in Tunis while General de Gaulle was exercising supremacy over the Fighting French movement in Carlton Gardens." This is surely a classic example of the habit of English journals of "liberal" tendencies to round upon their friends, and I may add that many of us have not found it surprising that the General remained in Carlton Gardens whilst Vichyists sunned themselves in allied favour at Algiers. Nobody has said anything about " a general proscription of alleged pro-Vichyists, apparently to be condemned untried," but the Fighting French have rightly had much to say about the known Vichyists installed in authority in Algiers by way of a further dose of appeasement.
General de Gaulle appears to be a man of firm principle standing four square in an age when dishonest compromise has brought Europe to its present unhappy condition. I pass over his services in the last war since you seem to think that he does not want to fight. in this one, but I should like, in justice, to recall that he warned the French military authorities many years ago of the vital need of mechanisation, along with his splendid colleague Mandel urged Reynaud to continue the fight, and preseryed • the true and essential spirit of France by his courageous action cn June 18th, 594o. Most important of all„ he is the acknowledged leader. of the resistance movement in Metropolitan France, and to its protagonists he has proved a constant source of inspiration. Posterity at any rate will rightly appraise the greatness of this patriot to whom we, no less than his fellow countrymen, owe a debt that can with difficulty be repaid:—I am, Sir, yours faithfully, R. ERSKINE-WATSON.
Bark Mill Cottage, Lund House Green, Harrogate.
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