VICHY HELOTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 2, 3 January 1941, Page 4

VICHY HELOTS.

PETAIN'S NEW MOVE.

GROPING FOR U.S. HELP

REBUFF FROM BERLIN.

(By PERTIXAX.)

NEW YORK, November 5

The "meseage"' published in the French Press on October 10 under the name of Marshal Petain is undoubtedly the most important diplomatic step taken to this day by the Vichy Government. It may be attended by important consequences which the men who drafted the document did not foresee.

Interpreted literally, the message meant that the Vichy Government had resolved to change drastically the foundations of France's foreign policy, that it would not strive any more to bring about or to uphold or re-establish in Europe a balance of power (which necessarily implies co-operation with England, and. as far as possible, with the United States), but would henceforward renounce the traditional friendship with those two countries and recognise for ever the overlordship of the German empire.

Of course, what the Vichy Government proposes to do in the near future is of no importance whatever, eince the French nation in prostrate and thoroughly helpless. But the serious point is that the Government of Vichy should pledge itself and its successor to be at the beck and call of the victor —a gesture of moral demission which neither vanquished France in 1871 nor vanquished Germany in 1919, even in the full depth of their distress, agreed to do.

Boxing the Compass. The purpose Marshal Petain and his advisers had in mind when the decision was reached is fairly obvious. They wanted to ingratiate themselves to Germany, to pereuade her to grant various demands which had been firmly refused to them during the last two months, and, with that end jn view, to be admitted to a kind of partnership with Berlin and Rome, in a very humble rank, indeed, by the side of Spain, Rumania, and other servile States.

Already there is definite evidence that the Vichy rulers have been disappointed in their expectation. Marshal Petain's message has not been favourably received in Berlin. Hitler and the men around him do not deem it opportune to promote France to the dignity of an associate of the Axis. They want France to serve their own will with the absolute passivity of a corpse, and would regard it as dangerous to let her resume any freedom of movement even within very narrow bounds.

But while Vichy met with disappointment on the German side, it has begun to dawn upon it that a train of thought had been set in motion on the American side which, sooner or later, might involve a revision of this country's policy towards France. So far Marshal Petain has been credited here with the will to accomplish whatever he could to redeem France's independence; \>ueh is the reason why a diplomatic representation has been continued. Were Marshal Petain to behave in a different manner—that is, in accordance with the gist of his "meseage"—other views might prevail.

In order to ward off that danger, the officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vichy have tried to explain away the statement of the old soldier, and a close friend of his has joined in the endeavour. All have said that the repudiation of the "entente cordiale" with England had been contemplated, but that it had never been intended that the time-honoured bond with the United States should simultaneously disappear.

All-Round Distrust. It is doubtful whether that interpretation has been found here to be of practical value. So intimate have become Anglo-American relations that for any third nation it is well-nigh impossible to keep on good terms with Washington and yet show hostility to London. Further information hae elicited the fact that the officials of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs only learned of the content of the Petain message after it had been made public. Marshal Petain had avoided taking them into his confidence. Most of them belong to the traditional echool of French diplomacy and they would have done everything in their power to discourage the new course of policy. Gaston Bergery bears all responsibility for the wording of the document. phrase where it eaid, rather demagogically, that in the past the heads of factories which turn out war materials did their best to foster enmity between France and Germany. Bergery is the AlcJbiadee of Freath politics. An intelligent, alert, amd capriciously wandering force which progresses along broken lines, he started about 1933 a "Common Front" of his own, a prefiguration of the "Popular Front" of 1936, and, for all that, he was not included in the latter political formation. When Bergery was elected to Parliament, his opponent produced two wills of a Freiherr von Kaula, a German subject of great wealth, who wae interested in the Mercedes Company of motor cars. Gaston Bergery and his mother were the chief beneficiaries under those wills, and it was alleged that he was von Kaula'e son. Bergery took proceedings for libel and won his case; under French law, to obtain damages it is necessary only to prove that the intention to cause moral harm had really existed.

Doomed to Failure. The Vichy Government may be relied upon to exert itself to safeguard in the United States a minimum of goodwill, arid it ought not to ignore any longer that all its endeavours to discriminate between England and America are doomed to failure. Of late it has refrained from approaching Washington whenever it wants to obtain some limited relaxation of the British blockade. Occasionally it rather applies to General Francisco Franco for that kind of assistance—aaid. by the way, there is trustworthy authority for the report that conversations, initiated in Madrid between Sir Samuel Hoare, the British Ambassador, and the French naval attache were at the origin of the tolerance shown by the British Admiralty to the six French warships which went through the Strait of Gibraltar without being interfered with and turned the ecale agawst General de Gwulle at Dakar.