Evening star., 1944-06-11
De GuuIIe and France


BY inviting General de Gaulle to
visit him In the near future, Presi-
dent Roosevelt has made it clear
that the two men are not so far
apart from each other that they
cannot talk together. Such meet
ing, though it may not settle every
thing to the complete satisfaction
of the general and his friends,
should at least have the virtue of
clearing the air of much of the
turbulence and breast-beating with
which some groups have approached
the problem of how France is to be
governed, now that our Allied forces
have landed there.
AS head of the French National
Committee of Liberation - which
lately has come to call itself the
provisional government of France
General de Gaulle has apparently
been insisting that his organization
should be charged exclusively with
the responsibility of administering
the civil and political affairs of the
fallen Third Republic until such time
as national elections can be held.
On the other hand, the British and
American Governments have been
adhering closely to the view that
General Eisenhower, as supreme
commander of our Allied forces,
should have sufficient freedom of
action to cope with the situation as
he deems best for the we'll being of
his troops, without having his au-
thority circumscribed by the De
Gaullist regime.
The problem Is a complex and
difficult one, and nobody solves it
by saying that General de Gaulle
is completely right and the British
American attitude completely wrong,
or vice versa. The issues involved
are not simply a matter of black
and white nor do they reduce erthem-
selves, as some extremists have con-
tended, merely to President Roose-
velt's alleged personal dislike of the
general. For, although it can be
persuasively argued that the in
vasion of France has made 1t more
important than ever to recognize
the De 7Gaullist regime as a pro-
visional government, it can at the
same time be argued with no less
cogency that General Eisenhower
should have no political restraints
on hirn-short of broad Allied pol
icy-for as long as military events
remain critical and the lives of
thousands of young men are at
stake.
Time may show, of course, that
the majority of the French people
support the De Gaullist organiza-
ton. Meanwhile, though, the Amer
lean and British Governments have
to reckon with the fact that this
regime, despite the no-surrender
valor which it symbolizes, lacks the
legitimacy of having come to power
through popular election and that
to recognize it now as provisional
government might conceivably lead
to serious consequences. In this
connection 1t is worth noting that
prewar France operated under a
great multiplicity of political parties
and that 1t is wholly possible, in the
circumstance, that General Eisen-
hover will find 1t necessary to deal
with important groups of French
men who are anti-Vichy without
being probe Gaulle.
In any event, it would be foolish
to let differences between the De
Gaullist regime and our own Gov
ernment obscure the great and his
toric fact that American and Allied
forces-not without blood sacrifice
are at this very moment engaged in
liberating France and that General
Eisenhower has assured all French
men that they will provide their own
civil administration until the battle
is won and they are at last free to
choose the kind of government they
want. This is a point not to be lost
sight of, now that General de Gaulle
is expected to carry his case directly
In the President