Crisis In French N. African Affairs

Northern Advocate, 23 July 1943, Page 6

Crisis In French N. African Affairs

NEW YORK, July 22. Giraud, when he returns to Algiers, will face a sharpened political and military crisis, according to reports reaching Washington, says the Washington correspondent of the “New York Times.” Reports indicate that the tension between army and navy on the one hand and the Committee for National Liberation on the other has not been relieved. It is learned that the committee during Giraud’s absence dismissed some 400 officers, although General Eisenhower, with the explicit approval of Washington and London, insisted that the French forces should not be shaken up by the wholesale dismissal of officers, whatever their previous political allegiance. Official quarters in Washington believe de Gaulle’s “purge” of the French army in North Africa was actuated by political motives which are disapproved by Allied military authorities who fear that de Gaulle’s action will impair the efficiency and morale of the army. Further difficulties in French poll tics are reported from Martinique, where 400 sailors of the French navy declined to recognise M. Hoppenot, whom naval officers support. Dictatorship Impossible Be Gaulle, in an interview in the “New York Times,” reiterated that the Fighting French movement represented non-political resistance of the Germans and would be discontinued after the war. There was no possibility of Fighting French becoming a national party or anyone introducing dictatorship in France, tie added that it was impossible to consider victory as the end to French renovation. The French people would not regard it as such. They had plans of their own.