Insult

His honor shining and renewed since his towering public stand against Vichy (TIME, Sept. 21), Edouard Herriot would not yield any small part of it. When the prefect of the Rhone police department asked him, in his home, for "an engagement of your honor in writing" to stay in France, he refused it.

"You insult me," said the septuagenarian President of the onetime Chamber of Deputies, vigorous in his resistance, in the growing resistance of France. "You can tell your masters that I am not obliged to take any engagements. I have only one thought, to serve France. How, does not concern you. You have the police and force, and you can use them. . . ."

Within 24 hours ten policemen were assigned to keep Edouard Herriot interned at his estate near Lyon. To Lyon, which Edouard Herriot had served 36 years as Mayor, the police looked like a guard of honor. When Berlin reported later that M. Herriot had been sent to a concentration camp at Vals-les-Bains, Vichy did not confirm it. Frenchmen hoped it was not true, felt that Vichy would not dare.

It was reported that Vichy had not quite dared--yet--to force the conscription of French labor for Germany, under the decree which allowed the Government to assign labor to any task "necessary to the national interest." Although the negotiations with the Nazis were so tense that Chief of Government Pierre Laval was said to have collapsed and left the conference, he had apparently reached a compromise with German Labor Commissioner Joseph Sauckel. Vichyfrance could have another try at filling the demand for 150,000 more French workers from volunteers in an exchange for war prisoners. So far, despite severe pressure, only 17,000 workers had volunteered.

For the same reason that Edouard Herriot would not promise not to leave France, other Frenchmen would not promise to leave it.

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