Makers of Modern France
ATYEO, HENRY C.
Makers of Modern France TWO MEN WHO SAVED FRANCE: PETAIN AND DE GAULLE By Sir Edward Spears Stein and Day. 218 pp. $5.95. Reviewed by HENRY C. ATYEO Professor of History, New York...
...He sets out simply to show that both Petain and de Gaulle "saved France" at a particular time, and he completely omits any detailed reference to Petain in talking about de Gaulle's experiences...
...For Lloyd George and the Cabinet the immediate question was whether Britain should negotiate a separate peace with Germany...
...New obstacles might obstruct the road that lay ahead, but they must not stop him...
...France owes him her existence even more than we do ours...
...There had been," he found, "acts of mutiny all over France, from Bordeaux to Nantes and Limoges," involving more than half the divisions of the French Army...
...In addition, this interpolation only makes more awkward the transition from Petain in 1917 to de Gaulle in 1940...
...This, to say the least, is a bold statement for a British historian—and one that may be questioned by many...
...To which Spears retorted, "If I were you, mon General, I would not recall Joan of Arc too often in England...
...This decision," observes Spears, "went beyond heroism...
...If they refused (and many did), de Gaulle wanted them punished and on at least two occasions actually assigned French officers to the famous Tower of London on his own authority...
...The incident occurred at a dinner party given by de Gaulle for a few select friends at the Connaught Hotel...
...Few readers will want to read the Spears version and follow it with another 60 pages of the Petain report...
...It adds little to the well-told experiences of General Spears, and could have been more appropriately woven into his own account, with the complete text added, perhaps, as an appendix...
...But even after "His Majesty's Government recognized General de Gaulle as Leader of all Free Frenchmen," he gained little support from his countrymen and none at all from the United States, which had already recognized the Petain government in Vichy...
...This, de Gaulle insisted, would make him a British "stooge," and he flatly refused...
...Once his force began to grow, he sought a beachhead where he might establish a "Free France" somewhere in the French colonial empire...
...he drove hard to establish an army with all those who gave even casual support...
...Only once was there a serious question of whether de Gaulle would continue to collaborate with the British, or whether "he would retire from the scene and withdraw to private life in Canada...
...It begins with his appointment in April 1917 as Commander-in-Chief, and his immediate involvement with the mutinous Army...
...That moment came after the fruitless negotiations between Admiral Somer-ville and Vichy General Gensoul, when the British naval forces moved into the port of Oran in Algeria to bomb and destroy the pride of the French Navy in order to keep it out of German hands...
...But Spears, whom S. L. A. Marshall calls the "greatest humanist among military writers, a poet laureate of the wars," compensates for his lack of detached objectivity by providing a more lively texture of individual experience and judgment...
...I, General de Gaulle, now in London, call on all French officers and men...
...The destiny of the world is at stake...
...Spears is penetrating yet fair in his character analysis...
...He realized that you might as well ask an oyster to give up its shell as ask an Englishman to surrender...
...Only a few hours earlier, in the face of advancing German Panzer divisions, another more famous General, Philippe Petain, the 84-year-old "Victor of Verdun," had stepped before a microphone in the Council room in Bordeaux to announce: "It is with heavy heart that I tell you today that it is necessary to try to bring the combat to an end...
...The Channel proved too narrow for many of those Frenchmen who had crossed it, and they joined the queue of those more anxious to salute the Statue of Liberty in person and in situ than to indulge the dangerous occupation of striking a blow for what that statue stood for...
...His "inspired leadership and humane understanding," which enabled him to turn the Army around and head it toward victory, is a thrilling chapter in military annals...
...Although Churchill and de Gaulle differed radically at times, their respect for each other grew to the extent, writes Spears, that "Without him [Churchill] there would have been no de Gaulle and no Free French...
...10 Downing Street to see Winston Churchill, arranged for the bbc broadcast, and set up headquarters for de Gaulle in the Rubens Hotel—later, as his staff grew, transferred to the Carlton House Gardens...
...Upon arrival they went immediately to No...
...Although the material on de Gaulle is likely to be of greater interest to many readers, the first section on Petain is equally well written...
...De Gaulle, with British sanction, formed a bold plan to assemble a British and French task force in nearby Freetown, Sierra Leone, slip into Dakar Bay and, by combining a sea and land invasion, take the base...
...In many ways this documentary evidence is of value only to the specialist interested in source material...
...to get in touch with me...
...Spears' move-by-move description of the attempt is a fascinating account of naval maneuvering and bombardment...
...Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not and shall not die...
...Successful in this first conflict, he went on to face greater ones in the days that followed...
...General Spears also finds it difficult to be fully objective...
...More bitter for de Gaulle, though, was the sight of some 20,000 French soldiers and sailors in England giving their allegiance to the Vichy government and choosing to return to the mainland under the German heel rather than enter the Free French Movement...
...The expedition, unfortunately, was a complete fiasco...
...May all Frenchmen group themselves round the government over which I preside, and may they endure their anguish in silence while keeping only their faith in the destiny of the homeland...
...The middle section of the book is Petain's verbatim report of the mutinies, "A Crisis of Morale in the French Nation at War...
...He is a part of the story and naturally cannot divorce himself from his own emotional involvement...
...As Spears says, "He had suffered one more setback at Dakar, but it did not deter him...
...De Gaulle met each setback with inflexible determination...
...It is a story about these two French generals, involving two world wars, that Major-General Sir Edward Spears, liaison officer between the British and French armies during both wars, tells in terms of personal, intimate experience...
...The stones he encountered he picked up and added to the burden he already carried...
...He concludes that de Gaulle "emerged from [the summer of 1940] with his qualities of courage and self-reliance, audacity and daring, but also with his defects of ingratitude, vindictive-ness, duplicity and prejudice...
...The difference between Petain "the hero" of World War I, and Petain "the collaborator" in World War II, is glossed over by Spears...
...The low morale of the French, and of the British too, as Russian resistance on the Eastern front dwindled and finally ceased (and before the United States actively entered the conflict) has often been mentioned by historians, but the full extent of Allied discouragement is seldom realized...
...It now seems apparent that this General de Gaulle foreshadowed the President de Gaulle of today...
...While the party sat around the fire after dinner de Gaulle quite unexpectedly announced, "I really am Joan of Arc...
...He concentrates on one period in the life of each man: Petain as Commander-in-Chief of the French Forces during the summer of 1917, and de Gaulle as leader of the Free French during the summer of 1940...
...It was General Spears' task, as principal liaison officer, to become, in effect, an "undercover man" and ferret out evidence of the mutiny as well as search for ways that France and Britain might work together...
...De Gaulle stayed...
...it was that of a man prepared to face martyrdom for the sake of his country...
...As the whole of North Africa was closing ever more tightly with bared teeth and snarling ill will against de Gaulle," writes Spears, de Gaulle had to turn to West Central Africa—the Cameroons, Senegal and Gabon...
...Many other Frenchmen had already joined the British Army and Air Force, and de Gaulle wanted these men released to become part of his own force, now in the process of formation...
...The evidence he collected was frightening...
...For example, following his difficult assignment to tell de Gaulle of the British decision to destroy the French fleet at Oran, Spears writes: "I left [the meeting with de Gaulle], dragging my feet, weighed down by the knowledge that so many years of my childhood spent in France were now dead, for they could never again be evoked happily...
...for Petain the problem was restoring confidence and determination to a tired, disillusioned army...
...In England de Gaulle stood alone when "no important French politician, no leader, would defy the Nazis...
...While the British admire the Saint, Spears continued, they still remember what happened to her and when she is mentioned "a slight smell of burning is often perceptible...
...all inherent in the metal, but turned into steel by the ordeals of that terrible summer...
...The British also remained cautious, perhaps because, as Spears' flatly states, "the miasmic clouds of Munich defeatism and pusillanimity still lingered and clung to many desks in Whitehall...
...Reviewed by HENRY C. ATYEO Professor of History, New York University IN the early" morning of June 18, 1940, a little known General Charles de Gaulle, Commander of the French Army's battered Fourth Division and now a fugitive, hurried to the British Broadcasting Corporation studios to tell his disheartened countrymen: "France does not stand alone...
...The key point in Senegal was Dakar, largest seaport on the coast, and powerfully defended by the Vichy government...
...A frequently-told story illustrating de Gaulle's almost naive conceit is given in detail by Spears...
...Unfortunately, therefore, the reader must furnish his own historical background to fully appreciate the incidents discussed...
...Still, de Gaulle was undaunted...
...De <5aulle won his first wrangle when the British Foreign Office demanded that all of the broadcast texts be submitted for inspection or censorship...
...Or again, with a touch of British pride no doubt, when de Gaulle visits him at his cottage in Berkshire, Spears recalls: "He paid tribute with immense sincerity to the pathetic and touching schemes of defense local patriotism had inspired...
...The section on General de Gaulle opens with his secret departure from France on a plane ostensibly taking General Spears to London...
Vol. 50 • March 1967 • No. 6
