Manawatu Evening Standard. MONDAY, DEC. 28, 1942 ADMIRAL DARLAN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIII, Issue 24, 28 December 1942, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. MONDAY, DEC. 28, 1942 ADMIRAL DARLAN.

The assassination of Admiral Darlan lias removed from tlie stage of the World War one of its most prominent figures. Hated and despised by tlie Fighting French, he proved in his last days how simple and easy it is to bow to the demands of expediency and take his place with France’s greatest ally, of whom he had for more than two years been its most bitter critic. The manner of his death is widely deplored ; the assassin is the cruellest of murderers for Lis crime is cunningly planned and brutally executed. Why Darlan should have fallen at the hands of one of his own countrymen has yet to be explained. The name of the murderer has been rigidly concealed, and though he has expiated his crime none can say at present whether he came from the legion of Fighting Frenchmen or was a Vichy adherent. President Roosevelt, it seems, believes that the Germans or Italians inspired the deed because of Darlan’s desertion of Vichy France and the Axis.

Admiral Darlan took a leading part in the French surrender of 1940 and held high office under Marshal Retain, whose successor he was until his fall from grace in Vichy. In the critical period from the dark days of two and a half years ago he never hesitated to declare that French salvation lay in full collaboration with Germany, and if he refused to go past the armistice terms with the conquerors he none the less showed bitter enmity for his former ally Britain. It was by cliance that he was in Algiers when the Allied forces landed in North Africa, and he strove to make the venture a failure. With resistance crushed the democratic world learned with amazement, and not a little bewilderment. that Darlan had been chosen as head of Ihe French in that large area. His sudden adherence to the Allied cause conferred very material advantages, both political and military on the United Nations, hut it has yet, to be proved that these'could not have been obtained by tlie Fighting French. As a matter of expediency he was accepted, but distrust of him remained firmly among the Fighting French and the British too. Now he has passed from the scene of one of his most remarkable exploits—his sudden conversion to the Allied cause —and none can say at this moment whether he was sincere in declaring against the Axis after his collaboration with Hitler and Mussolini, or whether he was playing.a deep political game which Fighting French leaders have suspected. His successor, General Giraud, is a different type and should not only be a wise leader of the Frenchmen in North Africa but also acceptable to the. de Gaulle cause.