THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 179 No. 5319

LONDON, APRIL 18th, 1942

SIXPENCE

THE RULERS OF FRANCE

The Appointment o f Laval, and the Man who Secured it. By Louis Vailard

HUNGARIANS AND RUMANIANS The Jealous Satellites o f Berlin. By David Walker

THE “AUSTERITY” BUDGET Restoring Proportion to a Commercial Society

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK Laval a t Vichy

The G erm ans have imposed Pierre Laval upon Marshal Pétain. The event, m ore fully discussed in an article on another page, is o f the first im portance. I t m a rks th e end o f the a ttem p t to win F rench public opinion to co llaboration with Germany, and the beginning o f an open a t tem p t to impose collaboration. F o r a long tim e H itle r practised a measure o f appeasem ent tow ards the French, and it is th is policy which is now w ritten off as a failure. Two great elements are resisting collaboration—the Communists, who have taken new h ea r t and strength from th e successful Soviet defence, and the Catholics. The French Catholic Jocistes a re particularly prom inent in a tenacious resistance to the New O rder, because the New O rder is basically an invitation to Europeans to sell their b irth rig h t as free and independent men fo r th e mess o f pottage known as economic security. The New O rder would be a well-run slave p lan ta tion , perhaps well fed and well provided with amusements, but still a degradation ; and as the Catholics have the highest sense o f th e dignity o f man, so they are the m ost resistant element in F rance to the new conceptions.

ports could also be obstructed. F o r G e rm any’s African campaign all this is im portant. I t is not less im portant, in the German calculation, to ensure official French opposition to any Anglo-American landings in F rance. The Germans know very well th a t even where the R .A .F . has struck most heavily, the ordinary French people th ink o f British bombers as deliverers. But even quite a small am ount o f French resistance would relieve the great strain on Germany enough to make an im portan t difference to the prospects on the Russian front. “ Attentisme” in Vichy—and Rome

D éa t complains about Gaullism e in the Vichy Civil Service, while his friend Guy Crouzet, o f Les Nouveaux Temps, directs the a ttack in particu la r to the Vichy Foreign Office : ‘ ‘Le Quai d ’O rsay continue. ’ ’ There, he says, ‘ ‘th e negative s p i r i t” o f Alexis Léger still reigns, “ in the most discreet o f the evacuated Ministries, and th e one th a t has learnt least and forgotten least in the last two years. There the traditional Anglomania goes hand in hand w ith nostalgia fo r the regime o f yesterday, and it is there th a t flourishes the fine flower o f a convinced attentisme. ’ ’

We have always deplored the false idea, which the Marshal seemed to have, th a t he could proceed with the restoration o f Catholic values in F rance under the aegis o f H itle r, while a t the same tim e H itle r was busy destroying Catholic values th ro ughout Europe. There was a narrow egoism in the calculation which blinded the eyes o f its sponsors to th e p la in tru th th a t th e Germans could n o t possibly afford to let the family and the Church flourish freely in one p a r t o f Europe, next door to the te rrito ries where their State idolatry was being enforced as the supreme value. We th ink th e Church in F rance will gain as the Marshal is made more and more o f a figurehead, and the reality o f Vichy F rance is seen to be the highly materialistic Laval. In the name o f the integrity o f the French Empire, we may expect action against F rance Equatorial Africa.

The dangers o f the present moment for F rance a re many. Chief am ong them is th e fact th a t this summer the value o f the F rench Fleet to Germany is higher th an it will ever be again. The F rench have had tim e to repair much o f the damage inflicted by the British a t Oran, in the terrible crisis o f July, 1940 ; bu t they have n o t been able, o r anxious, to push on w ith naval construction as Britain and the United S tates are doing. But Britain is fully extended a t sea, and the United S tates has n o t yet recovered from the Pearl H a rb our disaster. Today the French fleet could make an enorm ous difference, n o t only in th e M editerranean, bu t in th e South A tlantic. The Japanese am b itio n is to make the sea jou rney from the Cape o f G ood Hope to E ritrea, the Persian G u lf and India, increasingly dangerous. The first h a lf o f the passage from B rita in could be made much more dangerous i f the F rench ships could be brought to support the Germ an U -b oat campaign, and the shorter jo u rney to the West African

To see the difference in th e atm ospheres o f Paris and Vichy, one has to see the newspapers o f unoccupied France, which, although o f course they vary greatly, on the whole give a very different impression to the much m ore closely supervised Lyons Radio.

Attentism e means doing nothing except wait for a British victory, and therefore in Paris more th an in any o ther capital o f the world the Press is trying to show th a t a British victory is impossible, by proving th a t th e British Empire is in the last stages o f disintegration, th a t the Russians cannot resist much longer, th a t the Allies a re powerless against Japan. In Berlin and in Rome they do n o t say these things with anything like the same insistence o r appearance o f conviction, because there the business o f the Press is to explain why the end o f the war is still ou t o f sight by w riting o f the strength o f Russia and Britain, and the trem endous task to which the Axis is committed. Nobody like G iovanni Ansaldo would be tolerated am ong the publicists o f Paris ; he would be called an attentiste. The G erm an Press is still concerned to underline the great difficulties in the Russian campaign, and is still glad th a t the F a r Eastern war provides each d a y ’s headlines, when otherwise there would be nothing acceptable to pu t in the headlines. But in Paris, Jean Luchaire insists th a t the Russian war is as good as over ; as, indeed, he has been insisting fo r months past.

The contrast between the Press o f Vichy and th e Press o f Paris which is discernible in all things has been particularly clear in connection with Sir Stafford C r ip p s ’ mission. The Vichy Press, as a whole, considered the factors in Indian political life with care and fairness, appreciated the great difficulties which Sir Stafford had to meet, and, in general, showed a sympathetic in te rest in th e outcom e o f his