Foreign News: Triple Miracle

The glossy, soft-chinned Comte de Paris, 34, exiled Bourbon pretender to the French throne, would dearly love to have Vichy give it to him even if no real power went with it. Last week he addressed an epistle to all Frenchmen from Rabat, Morocco. Said he:

“Incontestably France has recovered under the direction of the Marshal. This providential leader has accomplished the triple miracle of avoiding the total disappearance of our country, through his presence enabling the nation to continue to live and, finally, putting the nation on the track of its traditional destinies by breaking with the principles of the fallen regime.”

Last week Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain continued to work his triple miracle by means not so much miraculous as tyrannical. Faced with increasing sabotage by Frenchmen who don’t believe in the Pétain miracles, he set up special courts ordered to hear cases within ten days of arrests, to carry out death sentences pronto, without appeal.

He also turned over to the Nazis all enemies of the New Order they wanted.This was done with a grim parody of legality. The Germans gave the names they wanted to Vichy’s Paris Ambassador Fernand de Brinon. He told the office of Vichy’s Vice Premier Admiral Darlan, which told the Vichy Gestapo, who made the arrests. In so doing they were joined by members of the Nazi Gestapo (the Vichy Gestapo, either by accident or design, has let many prisoners slip through its fingers). The arrests were made in the name of the “International Convention for Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism”—a legal aftermath of the 1934 assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in Marseille. In this way it is said that scores of anti-Nazi German refugees and other Hitler-haters have passed from French soil into oblivion.

Last week, also, Marshal Pétain showed himself an increasing master of dictatorial double talk. Addressing his Council of State, from whom he demanded an oath of allegiance, he pronounced such ripe ambiguities as: “Since the day when, by the irresistible force of circumstances more than by will, and above all, my own, I was placed at the head of the State, I have multiplied appeals to common sense, to reason and to the notion of public interest. . . .

“I am anxious about our children—the springtime of our nation. I think of the fathers of families, those great adventurers of modern times. . . .

“I want to assure for our compatriots the comforts of eternal certitudes, the virtue of whose old-fashioned name I dare take in my mouth, of country, of discipline, of family and morals, and pride in the right and duty to work.

“I have felt perhaps more bitterly than you the collapse of my country. But I also know the reactionary possibilities of salvation. . ..

“I listen to the nation’s heartbeats, and despite’ the efforts of bad shepherds I find it healthy.

“I am happy to note that the feeling of liberty remains lively.” Last week certain profits of collaboration with Germany began to accrue to Vichy. Berlin announced that Vichy’s bill for the German Army of Occupation had been cut from 400,000,000 to 300,000,000 francs a day.