PETAIN V. THE CONQUEROR

The Government of Germany learned last week what the people of France have gradually learned since the Armistice of June 22: that France's Chief of State is no stooge of Adolf Hitler, of Pierre Laval, or of anybody else. Marshal Henri Philippe Petain is old, crotchety, painstaking, slow. He is also honorable, patriotic and, when he takes the advice of a few trusted friends, often a clever political tactician. Last week his political tactics seemed about to get France into big, bad trouble with her conquerors.

To Vichy, after the dismissal fortnight ago of Vice Premier Laval, went Germany's Ambassador to France Otto Abetz. Young Otto Abetz had been charged by Adolf Hitler with removing from the Vichy Government any threats to the continued "collaboration" of France and Germany. In Vichy he saw Marshal Petain, then hurried to nearby Chateldon to hear Laval's story of his break with Petain. At Abetz' insistence, Chief of State Petain received Citizen Laval and listened to his justification of the conduct, still unrevealed, which led to his dismissal. At Abetz' insistence, Chief of State Petain permitted Citizen Laval to leave unoccupied France and take up his residence in Paris. But the old Marshal flatly refused to take Laval back into his Cabinet.

Ambassador Abetz had other demands to make. He wanted Laval's man, Fernand de Brinon, made emissary between Vichy and the German authorities in Paris. This Marshal Petain agreed to. He wanted Minister of the Interior Marcel B. Peyrouton's Groupe de Protection dissolved. This the Marshal also agreed to, although the GP was his own bodyguard. But when Ambassador Abetz demanded reorganization of the Cabinet, the ousting of Peyrouton and Minister of Justice Raphael Alibert, credited with heading the Petain brain trust, Petain asked for time.

These two were among the bitterest opponents of Laval in the Petain Cabinet. Other non-politicians whom the old Marshal came to trust were War Minister General Charles Huntziger, Navy Minister Admiral Jean Darlan, Secretary of State for the Presidency of the Council Paul Baudouin, whom Laval ousted as Foreign Minister to take over the job himself. In this group, and in the person of General Maxime Weygand in Africa, centred the opposition to "collaboration" of a kind that would mean utter capitulation. Their strongest cards were the remainder of the French Navy and Weygand's Army in Africa, and these cards grew in power with Italy's reverses in the Mediterranean. So powerful had they become by last fortnight that Peyrouton could speak openly against Laval in a Cabinet meeting and bring about his ouster (TIME, Dec. 23).

Last week Peyrouton looked more like the strong man of the Cabinet. Onetime colonial administrator in Morocco and Tunisia, onetime Ambassador to Argentina, he is a politician who has kept out of the mainstream of politics. As Chief of Police, he has fired 57 out of 94 prefects, 230 out of 261 sub-prefects, appointed Army and Navy officers in their places. With the Foreign Ministry under Pierre Etienne Flandin, whom Petain does not trust either, the Marshal must have felt the need of a pair of shoulders as husky as M. Peyrouton's.

At week's end he sent word by Emissary De Brinon to Ambassador Abetz firmly refusing to make any further changes in his Cabinet. The Cabinet met in Foreign Minister Flandin's sickroom in Vichy to figure out the next move but one. The next move was Adolf Hitler's.

"A shrewd conqueror will always enforce his exactions on the conquered only by stages. Then lie may expect that a people who have lost all strength of character will not find in any of these acts of oppression, if one be enforced apart from the other, sufficient grounds for taking up arms again."--Mein Kampf.

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