GENERAL DE CAULLE.

Evening Star, Issue 25226, 13 July 1944, Page 4

GENERAL DE CAULLE.

General do Gaulle has gained the substance if ho stiil lacks tho shadow as the outcome of his conversations with President (Roosevelt on the status to bo given to his National Committee. America will accept the general and the committee as tho working authority controlling all .French affairs; that they will not be called a provisional government is of the least importance. It is tho exception; rather than tho rule, for provisional governments to become permanent ones, and the French people naturally will decide that question when liberation is completed. Meanwhile Mr Mackenzie King's tributo to General de Gaulle, that he typified the spirit of Franco which would restpre her to her past greatness, does not overshoot the mark. Mr Harold Nicolson, writing in the 'Spectator,' puts it: " Ho is the man of June 18, 1940; he is the man who refused to be subservient to any foreign government, and who by his obstinacy and faith preserved tho dignity and independence of France: he is the man who, by sheer force of volition, eliminated all alternatives and imposed a unity_ of purpose upon all parties and politicians; ho is the only man who. when.deliverance comes, will bo accepted as unquestioned leader by a vast majority of the French people." What will happen then? After a tour of Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco Mr Nicolson has to admit that he does not know. In the Consultative Assembly, representing many parties, which supports tire Algiers Committee he found currents and cross-currents inevitably existing. "If London' had been occupied and a section of our Fleet and Army had, with America's assistance, been reformed in Kenya Colony, then we also would display a certain sensitiviness to the touch." What was astonishing was the degree of amity that' had been evolved. There has been a fear that there may be civil war in France following liberation. But de Gaulle has rebuked the most vindictive feelings by declaring that among all those who had supported Vichy there were " per-, haps a dozen traitors; perhaps a hundred men of weak character." Much depends on how the Communists will agreo with tho rest of the Resistance movement. It has been questioned whether the .general is a democrat; he has indicated that he is opposed to totalitarianism. Mr Nicolson concludes that the only hope of pre-' venting civil war in France is cooperation between tho Resistance and the Communists in a government headed by de Gaulle and recognised by the Allied Powers, and that the only hope of restoring Liberalism in France is that de Gaulle should maintain his authority undisputed until France gains her health, her sanity, and a new Constitution. To-day's trend is in 'the right direction.