FRANCE: Within the Gates

The rumors began on Nov. 13 when Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, Vichy Chief of State, failed to make a scheduled broadcast. That caused a spate of reports, some buttressed by “informed circles” in France, all adding up to the suggestion that Marshal Pétain was fed up with Nazi Puppet Pierre Laval, and anxious to set himself aright with anti-Nazi Frenchmen and the Allies. Finally, a Geneva newspaper published the text of the speech Pétain never made—a document purporting to promulgate a return to democratic government. At week’s end, an aurora borealis of rumors flamed from Vichy, Berlin, Madrid, Berne, Stockholm, French Africa: Pétain had abdicated, he remained in office; he lay stricken with heart disease, he was in good health; he was under house-arrest in Vichy, he had conferred freely with Laval.

“Of His Own Free Will.” Last August the French underground newspaper Resistance predicted that Vichy would do exactly what Vichy seemed to be doing last week: i.e., make a show of democratic repentance, against the day when the Allied armies and anti-Nazi Frenchmen liberate France. Said Réesistance:

“The idea was to replace Laval by a gang of former politicians who would [privately] assure the Germans of their complete loyalty . . . appease public opinion . . . [and] provide a smoother transition should there be a successful U.S. landing. . . . Thus Pétain would no longer be regarded as the man who had wrecked the Republic; he would just have kept it in the twilight because of circumstances until he himself was ready of his own free will to restore democratic institutions.”