FRANCE: Obituary of a Republic

When the Republic of France died last week, four days before the 151st anniversary of Bastille Day, it was a solemn hour for lovers of freedom, especially in the U. S. Although the Declaration of Independence was written 13 years before the Bastille fell, the American and French Revolutions had the same ideological roots, and in the minds of Americans and Frenchmen alike the words Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité evoked the same ideals as Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. For a century and a quarter the U. S. and France watched those ideals spread across most of the world. For the last few terribly quick years, together they have watched them crumble.

To most U. S. citizens last week it was as if a well-loved wife had been unfaithful. The shock was no less because they had expected it. France had been cajoled, betrayed, raped, but what hurt was her final acquiescence. To some it seemed because of that final acquiescence. France, now brazenly fascist, must always have been unfaithful to democracy at heart.

Perhaps they were right. For by last week it was crystal clear that France’s collapse had been preceded by a long, slow disintegration of the democratic and republican ideal, and in the process of disintegration was many a lesson for thoughtful U. S. citizens to ponder.

They could reflect that the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness implies that good citizens will work together for the happiness of the greatest number; that in a republic the privilege of self-government imposes the obligation to select representatives who will honestly and disinterestedly govern; that the preservation of democracy requires all citizens vigilantly to exercise their democratic rights, to give generously of their time and their energy, to maintain their self-respect and respect for their chosen Government, to fight for it when necessary. For 20 years political apathy has been common to most republics.

In France realization came too late to save the Third Republic and democracy. Bewildered by what had happened to them, the French people needed time to relearn the lessons they had forgotten. For the present the most that could be salvaged was the nucleus of the French nation, and even this was in doubt. To try to save as much as they could, by whatever means they could, was the self-appointed task of the self-appointed leaders of what was left of France.

In Vichy, seat of the Government, Vice Premier Pierre Laval told the hastily summoned Chamber of Deputies: “I bring you, not the conviction, but the certainty, that if you want an honorable peace you must give Marshal Pétain what he wants.”

What old Marshal Pétain wanted (on the advice of Pierre Laval) was for the Chamber and the Senate to vote themselves out of existence and empower him to write a new Constitution. This they meekly proceeded to do, with only three dissenters in the Chamber, one in the Senate. The one Senate dissenter was the Marquis Pierre de Chambrun, who holds honorary U. S. citizenship (under a Maryland law) by virtue of his direct descent from the Marquis de La Fayette, and whose nephew is Pierre Laval’s son-in-law.

Next day a National Assembly of both Chambers ratified the decision, but this time there were 80 dissenters and they forced through a motion to have the new Constitution ratified by a plebiscite. That made everything perfectly legal.

President Albert Lebrun quietly slipped into the background and 84-year-old Marshal Pétain in a decree beginning “We, Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France,” designated himself as Chief of State, 57-year-old Pierre Laval as his successor. In his new twelve-man Cabinet, key posts went to the men who had surrounded him since France sued for peace: Ministry of Defense to General Maxime Weygand, Ministry of Interior to Neo-Socialist Adrien Marquet, Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Businessman Paul Baudouin.

Other Ministries: Finance, Senator Yves Boutillier, who had been adviser to the aging Joseph Caillaux; Justice, Raphael Alibert; Youth & Family, Jean Ybarnégaray, a Basque Rightist Deputy, who named his fellow Basque, Tennist Jean Borotra, director of amateur sports; Agriculture, Agriculturist Pierre Caziot; Communications, Corsican Deputy François Piétri; Colonies, Martinique-born Senator Henri Lémery; Public Instruction, Senator Emile Mireaux, Industrial Production & Labor, onetime Popular Frontist Réné Belin. Though none of these men was distinguished for love of The Republic, they had a case to make.

The new Government soon began to show its character. In a series of decrees Chief of State Pétain barred all non-Frenchmen (i.e., Jews) from holding Government positions, “invited” industry to send employed farmers back to their fields and to create collective organizations for housing and feeding workers, spoke of pegging the franc to the dollar instead of the pound (43 to the dollar).* Said he:

“The common life of our nation must now have a new orientation and must be integrated within the continental system of production and exchange. France must return to her agricultural and peasant character primarily, and her industry must refind its traditional quality. It is therefore necessary to put an end to the current economic disorders by rational organization, production and cooperative institutions.”

That other necessary component of the Fascist State, the single party, promptly made its appearance. Deputy Marcel Déat (“I do not want to die for Danzig”) announced that he had declined a Cabinet post, instead would form a French Uniform Party to support Leader-Designate Laval “which would place an authoritarian people’s movement at the side of the authoritarian regime.” Party planks: 1) France must do nothing to compete with German industry; 2) compulsory labor service for youth; 3) “France for the French.”

But in spite of all France’s new Government did to appease the conquerors, dark days lay ahead. A separatist movement appeared in Brittany, perhaps to be followed by other such movements by the Catalans, Basques, Corsicans, what not. In Switzerland the Duc de Guise, Bourbon pretender, was scheming to get the French Throne for his son, the Comte de Paris. Both Italy and Germany warned that the ”political bill of reckoning” had not yet been paid, would be dictated by “historic realism.” France, said the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, “will not find her place on an equal basis with the Reich.”

The Price. Frenchmen now had to pay for their lack of vigilance, generosity, courage; for electing politicians who traded their principles to maintain themselves in power. Frenchmen last week knew that Marshal Pétain was a figurehead, that their real leader was Pierre Laval, one man who thought he could have saved France from Hitler—if France had been willing to pay his price.

Laval, like all French politicians, had his politique, and Laval’s politique was cooperation with Italy to keep Germany behind the Rhine and the Brenner. But that policy came into conflict with Great Britain’s desire to keep Italy weak in the Mediterranean, and with the French people’s dislike of fascism, whether German or Italian.

Laval had seen Mussolini stop Hitler when he tried to grab Austria in 1934. In 1935, as Foreign Minister, Laval built the Stresa Front of France, Great Britain and Italy, only to see Britain crack it within two months by signing a naval treaty with Germany. The Hoare-Laval deal in 1935 would have kept Italy out of Germany’s clutches, thought Pierre Laval. But neither the British nor the French people would have any of that deal. Laval went into retirement and the Popular Front came into power.

To Laval and his fellow Rightists, the Front Populaire was responsible for the subsequent degeneration of France. The Popular Front let rearmament lag while it pushed through its reforms. The Popular Front sent to Loyalist Spain munitions needed at home. The Popular Front pushed Italy into the Axis. The Popular Front undermined those institutions represented by the slogan of fascist France: Labor, The Family, The Fatherland. So thought, and still thinks, the Right.

Truth was that the Popular Front, like Republican Spain, represented the Leftmost swing of the political pendulum in Europe. But the Right became stronger and more determined. Franco won in Spain, the Old Bolsheviks were purged in Russia, in France the Popular Front fell. And Britain’s seesaw diplomacy floundered Europe into war, with France tied to Britain’s tail.

Laval had grown rich while in politics, through being in the know. An old Socialist from the French backwoods, his political philosophy had moved steadily to the Right. Whether he and the interests he represented feared Communism more than Hitler was not precisely the question. They had no stomach for the war, but neither had the people of France. French industry, French labor and France’s political leaders dawdled through nine months of war while Germany grew stronger & stronger. Laval the Appeaser had no place in the Government, but when Paul Reynaud, foe of appeasement, succeeded Edouard Daladier and made Paul Baudouin his Foreign Minister, the door was thus obliquely opened for appeasement.

After Sedan, Premier Reynaud was desperate. He called in Weygand, who said the battle was lost. Baudouin persuaded him to call in Pétain, who was mortally afraid of Communism if the war dragged on with France losing. Baudouin switched his allegiance from Reynaud to Petain, whose closest adviser was Pierre Laval. These men made peace and took over France with the tacit consent of Hitler—moved by what ultimate motives only history can judge.

The Man on Horseback who will try to make France strong again had not appeared last week. He was not likely to materialize out of any of the figures now running the country. Some people thought that, if the British should win, General Charles de Gaulle might be such a man. More likely it would be someone as obscure as Adolf Hitler was in 1918. Perhaps it would take a revolution to produce him.

General de Gaulle and other “free Frenchmen” in London observed Bastille Day by laying a wreath at the foot of the Cenotaph in Whitehall. In France, July 14 was a day of mourning, as July 4 might be to the U. S. if it surrendered its freedom to a conqueror.

*This was in the nature of a hopeful gesture. In actuality, the franc is now pegged to the mark at 20-to-1.