BRITISH PUBLIC UNEASY

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22476, 11 January 1943, Page 2

BRITISH PUBLIC UNEASY

Situation In North Africa “A Political Cesspool” N.Z.P A-—Special Correspondent (6.30 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 8. Whatever else the situation in , North Africa is described as, it certainly cannot be stated as being satisfactory at this stage. The tangled skein of French politics, the First Army’s slow progress and the growing annoyance of the censorship of news, all combine to produce a mood of dissatisfaction and uneasiness. Any official hopes that delicate negotiations would produce acceptable results have not been realised. Vichy’s dead hand hangs over North Africa and, in spite of co-operation with the Allies, prevents the welding of French forces there with General de Gaulle’s Fighting French. General de Gaulle and General Giraud have both issued statements in favour of the union of French forces and if the situation had been left to them they would probably have achieved it, but General Giraud, who is a soldier not a politician, is in a politial position as High Commissioner, and his advisers are the antithesis of everything for which the Fighting French stand. French officials in North Africa are a mixture of Vichy supporters, Royalists, Doriotists and Croix du Feu supporters who at no time were in favour of General de Gaulle’s stand for democratic principles, the laws of the Republic and the immediate formation of a provisional government for the whole empire as a pre-condition to the fusion of the military forces. British daily newspaper comments on the situation have been cautious and restrained, but the “New Statesman and Nation,” which does not mince matters, says: “In dying upwept, Admiral Darlan left in French North Africa a political cesspool whose stench not merely infects the cause of the Western allies, but also threatens, unless there is plain speaking and better understanding, to poison AngloAmerican relations. Mistakenly cautious, American censorship ii\ Algiers emasculates correspondents’ comments about the set-up on which the British, no less than the American, Army depends.” Commenting on the latitude shown the present regime in North Africa, the journal says: “It remains free to retain in high offices M. Chatel, the notoriously pro-German GovernorGeneral of Algeria; to maintain in appointments unreliable Petainist officers who form the majority of the senior ranks serving under General Juin (Commander-in-Chief), who at the best is described as an avowed Vichy supporter; to lease unsuppressed the Sol and other Fascist party organisations which infest Vichyist North Africa; to turn a blind eye to the activities of Axis agents.”