WHICH WAY FOR FRANCE?
Villard, Oswald Garrison
Which Wav For France? By Oswald Garrison Villard IF ANYBODY doubts that this is a war of startling changes refer him to the newly signed Rnsso- French pact. To Mr. Churchill and Mr. Roosevelt it...
...De Gaulle as the head of France until the French people had had a chance -to vote for or against him in a fair plebiscite...
...From now on it will be a race between Churchill and Stalin as to whose country plays the bigger role with France...
...How valuable were the signatures of the various nations attached to that...
...De Gaulle, with no more of an organized government behind him, and facing imminent dangers from the resistance forces and the Communists, calmly goes to Russia and signs up an anti-aggression pact with the most difficult man in Europe to deal with...
...A year ago no one spoke of France's playing an important role...
...It is altogether probable that this haste of De Gaulle's to sign up with Stalin will encourage others to do likewise...
...No treaty today means anything, whether signed by the United States or any other country, except that it is a temporary arrangement good until either party wants to throw it into the waste-paper basket...
...Roosevelt and Mr...
...He need have no hesitation in gloating over this proof that both Mr...
...Of course that will not be admitted by the Foreign Office in London or the State Department in Washington...
...Well, now this same Gen...
...Any American whose feelings are injured by this statement should also recall our solemn agreement with Korea, then an independent nation, to protect her against foreign aggression, which we calmly discarded and forgot when the Japanese conquered the country...
...The beaten states are bound to go down on their knees and take their orders from Stalin...
...It will not be his fault if some of the others, like Greece, do not likewise feel themselves compelled to enter his sphere...
...His Moscow success will help him tremendously in meeeting the opposition of the French Communists...
...They will insist that De Gaulle follow up his decision to nationalize the coal mines with a similar plan to take over the railways and other large enterprises...
...There will, of course, be no definite statement that such an agreement has been arrived at...
...It is not necessary to recall how long the Hitler-Stalin pact lasted, nor what happened to the British and French alliances with the Czechoslovakia they so coldbloodedly sold down the river in order to appease Hitler...
...De Gaulle will listen to Stalin before he listens to Churchill...
...23, after both he and Mr...
...The whole Grecian entanglement and bloodshed are largely due to the fact that the British have tried to get Stalin to agree to a line drawn down from the Baltic along the old Curzon line, and then straight down to the 'Aegean, so that they could play a dominant role in its share of the Balkans...
...Churchill had stressed the fact that they could not recognize Gen...
...It may strengthen them, too, but it will certainly prevent their taking a hostile attitude toward him now that he has the official blessing of Uncle Joe...
...Say what you will, that cannot be a palatable dose either in London or Washington...
...it naturally could not be put on paper...
...A Cynical Statement Churchill has been trying to build up a western bloc of small nations to make up for the British loss of their position as a first-class power...
...Giraud here before he invited De Gaulle...
...De Gaulle's way is still extraordinarily difficult, but he can now walk into the presence of Roosevelt and Churchill no longer as a suppliant, but as the head of a powerful nation backed by the greatest power in Europe...
...He insisted upon postponing recognition of the De Gaulle Committee of Liberation until Oct...
...Roosevelt kept out of the United States until last Spring...
...His recent gestures to De Gaulle have made it perfectly clear that he counts upon tying France up to England by the closest possible tie, just as in the dire days before Dunkirk he flew to Paris and offered the French something that no country had offered to another in the world's history: equal citizenship in either nation for the citizens of both, and the closest possible alliance short of complete union...
...This is a cynical statement, but a true one...
...Shot to pieces as it is, with the fighting on its soil barely at an end, it has suddenly again become a big power...
...Undoubtedly they will more than ever be inclined to force the communi-zation of France...
...De Gaulle may really feel that he has accomplished wonders in a very short time...
...Czechoslovakia led the way...
...He even slighted him by asking Gen...
...Hull guessed absolutely wrong as to how they should treat him and his country...
...In view of the dominating position in Europe of Russia today, it is my judgment that Gen...
...Again A Big Power Today Gen...
...France discarded its previous pact with the Russians...
...Roosevelt it must have come like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky...
...De Gaulle is the same man whom Mr...
...If anybody doubts this statement let him think of the Kellogg Peace Pact...
...There will always be the question whether there is not some secret agreement between the two leaders, and because, after all, pacts of this kind are not worth the paper they are written on the day after it appears to one or other of the signers that it is time to throw them overboard...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 52
