Evening star., 1940-10-23
Member of the Associated Press.
What Will France Do?

The international spotlight ShlltS
suddenly from the Balkans to
France. For the past fortnight, news
items have been coming over the
wires and the radio which indicate
that something sinister is brewing.
If current rumOrS are correct, the
Vichy government may soon be
granted a moderate peace by the
axis powers in return for joining
them in the war against Britain. OF
course, these rumors should be
treated with proper reserve. Never
theless, they should not be lightly
dismissed as wholly untrue. Some
diplomatic exchanges between Vichy
and Berlin, especially, are obviously
taking place.
1t was just a fortnight ago that
Marshal Petain, the aged head OF
the Vichy government, published a
message" to his fellow countrymen
wherein he clearly intimated that
France should accept the hard facts
of the present situation, abandon
former policies and fit into the new
economic order which, under axis
hegemony, was being established on
the European continent. This was a
most extraordinary statement, the
larger significance of which was not
sufficiently stressed by the American
press at the time. 1t implied that
the Vichy government was ready to
surrender morally as we'll as mill
tarily, not merely for the moment
but for the future as well. In the
long history of Franco-German ri
valry, here was something unprece-
dented. Neither vanquished France
in 1870 nor beaten Germany in 1918
had made such a moral capitulation.
Both had bowed momentarily to
force, but both had made it almost
defiantly clear that they bowed to
force alone and reserved what they
deemed their inalienable rights for a
better morrow.
Marshal Petain's amazing gesture
started the ball rolling. Almost
equally momentous was Winston
Churchills eloquent radio address to
the French people, whose echoes
have barely died away. The Prime
Minister would hardly have spoken
as he did, and on such short notice,
unless he had information of an i'm
pending crisis in French affairs. His
appeal to the French people not to
let "the common enemy" jockey
them into fighting against their
erstWhile ally appears to indicate
that he had taken German diplo-
matte efforts seriously. Parenthet-
ically, 1t is interesting to note that
efforts were made to liam the air"
so that his words would not reach
French hearers. And now Berlin
dispatches state that Hitler and Won
Ribbentrop have conferred in France
with Vice Premier Laval of the Petain
government, while Swiss dispatches
purport to describe the relatively easy
terms on which definite peace may
be obtained by France.
Assuming for the sake of discus
sion that such a peace is possible,
what would the contracting parties
gain by the dubious bargain? France
is today economically PROSTATE, sys-
tematically plundered by occupying
armies, and threatened with i'm
pending starvation, coupled with
financial bankruptcy and social
breakdown in the not-diStant future.
A definitive peace that would permit
the establishment of a central
government in Paris and end Ger
nany's plundering military occupa-
ton would presumably alleviate the
intolerable sufferingS which France
is now undergoing, no matter what
the ultimate price. The axis powers
would hope to get certain amount
Of naval, military and air strength
from their new ally, together with
much diplomatic prestige, good for
influencing neutrals and squirting on
Japan.
Yet these axis gains might be more
than outweighed by boomerang con-
sequences. Civil war would be more
than likely in the colonies, and the
patriotic rebels would almost Ger
tainly be effectively aided by Britain
when the Vichy regime had become
an open enemy. For Americans,
grave complications would surely
arise in the already ticklish problem
Of Martinique and other French pos
sessions in this hemisphere. We can
only hope that the supremely tragic
prospect of France even formally
allied with the axis against her for
mer friends will not come to pass.