Waiting

Having conquered all France and occupied three-fifths of it, the Germans for the past two months have been in no hurry to indicate the nature of the final settlement they will impose on the biggest nation they have whipped to date. While they dictated new boundaries for the Balkans and slowly turned more & more heat on Great Britain, the Wiesbaden deliberations were deliberately prolonged and France was left to wait her fate. France had to wait, but by last week it had become plain that France's colonies did not. The colonial parade to the defiant standard of General Charles de Gaulle* was in full swing.

> In Africa, where French West and Equatorial Africa had already gone over to De Gaulle, Morocco was in a state of revolt. Hundreds of Frenchmen were arrested by the Vichy-controlled Government, which still kept a shaky hand on the situation. Eighteen French airplanes were flown to Gibraltar by their rebellious crews.

> Governor Louis Bouvin of the five minuscule colonies of French India (Pondichery, Karikal, Chandernagor, Mahe, Yanaon; total pop. 300,353) declared their loyalty to De Gaulle.

> French Indo-China was lost to Vichy, whether or not De Gaulle got it.

> Tiny Tahiti in the South Pacific repudiated Vichy. From Madagascar off the east coast of Africa came reports of rebellion.

> In the Western Hemisphere, in Martinique, Guadaloupe and French Guiana, where 80% of the officials were reported for De Gaulle, plebiscites were planned. In Martinique harbor lay the cruisers Emile Bertin and Jeanne d'Arc, the aircraft carrier Bearn with 130 U. S.-made airplanes aboard.

> De Gaullemen in Egypt muttered ominously that "30 resolute officers" could swing Syria to Britain and De Gaulle.

All this was one more headache to the hamstrung Government of Vichy. But there was a modicum of cold comfort in the fact that it had also become a headache for the Germans. Harried little Vice Premier Pierre Laval, summoned to Paris by German Ambassador Otto Abetz, returned to Vichy last fortnight and ordered General Maxime Weygand to Morocco to see what could be done. But last week General Weygand was still in Vichy, although no longer a member of the Petain Cabinet.

Shrewd Pierre Laval did himself no harm in getting Weygand out of the Cabinet, for it has been known around Vichy for some time that General Weygand aspired to run the French State himself, muttering, "When will the old man [Petain] stop sleeping with that charcoal dealer [Laval] from Chateldon?" Laval further improved his position by making himself Acting President of the Cabinet, relieving Octogenarian Henri Philippe Petain of actual contact with the Government except at full Council meetings. Also out of the Cabinet went Adrien Marquet (Interior) and Jean Ybarnegaray (Youth & Family), two violent nationalists unloved by the Germans. Pierre Laval was now, for the moment at least, Vichy's one strong man.

Free (?) France. The job he has taken on is no enviable one. For one thing, the Capitol of France is the Hotel Du Parc. at Vichy, the executive seat Room 73 on the third floor. Nobody has ever had much luck running a country from a hotel room, as Pierre Laval well knows. Furthermore, "Free France" (as Vichy calls the unoccupied two-fifths of the nation) is a land of want and hardship which cannot exist disconnected from the rest of France. Every week some common useful thing disappears from the lives of its people.

There are no more matches in unoccupied France, LIFE reports in an essay on Vichy this week. Matches came from Scandinavia and the Germans let no more through. Milk, butter and cheese are scarce or nonexistent, for the Germans rule the great northwestern dairy area. No new stores of sugar from the occupied beet-sugar district around Lille are destined for Free France. Free France will eat none of this summer's harvest from the breadbasket of the northern plains. There is still tobacco in the Rhone Valley and Auvergne, but those shops in Provence that still have stocks also have queues outside, and in the Mediterranean departments few people any longer smoke. Gasoline in Free France is rationed to refugees going north, to a few indispensable services, and to officials.

The conquering Germans have requisitioned nothing from unoccupied France because, except for its huge wine industry, no important staples come from the unoccupied area. Mother Filloux still serves her internationally relished goose-liver pate and fat-breasted pullets on her terrace at Lyon. Broiled trout are still to be had at the famed little Hotel du Chateau at Randan, and crawfish at Robinson's, outside Vichy. The good & great cooks of France will see that she goes hungry palatably. But there are no more tarts in Vichy. Apple tarts have disappeared from the shops and there are no rooms for the ladies.

There are now three meatless days a week in Free France, but food rationing has not become universally effective. Alcoholic regulations are effective. The aperitif is outlawed. On three days a week no other spirits are served. France, whose world reputation for temperance was belied by her world's record of one saloon for every 80 men, women and children, is a much soberer country today.

Birth Pains. There are no Germans in unoccupied France and there is no French Army. Order is maintained by the local and national police. As yet there is singularly little expression of popular opinion. The French have been invaded or occupied in whole or in part 33 times in seven of their 19 centuries, but never with the paralyzing impact of the German Blitzkrieg last June.

No new State was ever launched in the modern world with so little convocation of popular opinion as L'Etat Franc,ais. There are no posters in unoccupied France, except those left by the withdrawing Germans stipulating the number of francs (20) exchangeable for a mark. The Government radio works only sporadically.

Labor and industrial regulations are promised from Vichy every day, and last week some elementary decrees were issued, but until communications are reopened between the two zones there will be little need of regulations because there is now almost no industry on either side of the demarcation line. Industrial unemployment is almost universal.

Like French public opinion, Free France itself is paralyzed. The wisest, most effective and popular leadership the country might produce could not overcome the one great fact that France is stagnant and waiting. It is waiting for some national ethos to develop, some popular base on which a government can find a true foothold, whether the ethos is communicated from the top or bottom. It is waiting for the time when it can become not half a country but one country. Above all it is waiting--and the Germans are deliberately making it wait--for the end of the Battle of Britain.

Perhaps nine out of ten people on either side of the demarcation line want the British to win. The masses of French people believe the British to be their one hope of salvation. The Vichy Government, on the other hand, while no fonder of the Germans than the littlest Frenchman is, believes the Germans are going to win the war. The quicker they win it, the better it will be for France. After that it will be up to France's rulers to make the best possible deal with the Germans.

The Guilt. Last week there were fresh signs that the Germans were making no easy deals. They submitted their bill for the upkeep of their Army of Occupation: $8,000,000 a day.* When a die-hard patriot of Nantes cut the cable line into the city, the Germans slapped a $100,000 fine on Nantes.

From Morocco onetime Minister of the Interior Georges Mandel last week flew to Vichy to surrender. He was clapped into bleak Chateau Chazeron with his fellow scapegoats, onetime Premiers Paul Reynaud and Edouard Daladier, former Generalissimo Maurice Gustave Gamelin. Cagey little sword-nosed Mandel for years kept a dossier on the misdemeanors of all high personages in France, and the Riom War Guilt Court would like to have this even more than his person.

The four scapegoats soon had new company: Popular Frontist Premier Leon Blum. All were questioned by Prosecutor Gaston Cassagnau for hours every day, as was the prosecution's chief witness, appeaser and onetime Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet. Whether or not the Riom defendants were found guilty of starting the war, the question was: Could they be saddled with the blame for it before the Germans pinned it on all Frenchmen?

*His flag is the Cross of Lorraine, red, with two horizontal bars on a white field. Motto of De Gaulle's "Free Frenchmen": Honor & Country, Valor & Discipline. *Germany estimated the Allied bill for upkeep of their 1918-30 Armies of Occupation at $1,625,000,000.

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