FRENCH EMPIRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1942, Page 4

FRENCH EMPIRE

COLONIES PRECARIOUSLY HELD NEED OF MORE LIBERAL POLICY. TACTICS OF THE MEN OF VICHY. (By Norton Webb in the “Christian Science Monitor.”) The American Goverment’s recent protest to Marshal Petain about the “visit” of a Nazi submarine to Martinique, with its clear implication that Martinique and possibly other French possessions in the Caribbean would be occupied unless such practice ceased, well illustrates the increasingly precarious position of not only French overseas domains in the Western Hemisphere but practically all those that are Vichy-held. Assuredly a more liberal colonial policy will ensue wherever the de Gaullists assume control. The action of the. Free French National Committee in granting a fair measure of independence to ■■ Syria seems to guarantee that. The colonies should welcome seizure in the name of Free France.

The situation of France’s empire today is due in part to a lack of really co-ordinated or sound policies of administration during the last decades of the Third Republic. In this period the French people as a whole seem to have almost entirely lost any interest in empire building. In fact, it cannot be said that the French people of themselves have ever been genuinely colonially minded. Had French overseas trusteeships been left to them alone they probably would have abandoned title to them. Their attitude, if any, was that colonies were incompatible with a republic and further were more of a liability than an asset. DIVERGENT AIMS. Interest in and administration of French possessions has resided mostly with a section of the French elite and the French Right or ultra-conserva-tives. These latter largely monopolised administrative policies and appointments and derived most of the benefits of French colonial economy. Their prime objective of a French empire was their conviction France had a world mission to spread its culture and civilisation. It was on this they based their overseas policy of assimilation of all natives into the French orbit.

This contracted strikingly with the platform of the small and much less influential school of French liberals who advocated conditional autonomy leading to full independence for all French possessions through decentralisation of administration and gradual increase of local self-government by natives.

This contrasted strikingly with the cessive French individualism induced varied, diverging, and complicated methods of French colonial administration that retarded progress and development. . Even as far back as France’s last so-called Imperial Conference in Paris in 1933, many qualified Frenchmen said that unless the Nation awoke to her responsibilities as trustee of a great empire she could not hope to retain it. Is this prediction, made by Frenchmen themselves, now being fulfilled? Besides Martinique, Vichy-held IndoChina now practically lost to Japan, French North Africa, Dakar, Madagascar —all such territories daily hover on the edge of becoming battlegrounds between anti-Axis and Axis forces. At any moment Madagascar, closed to all travellers, even to diplomatic couriers, may become a second Indo-China and a threat to Indian Ocean commerce unless the Allies act. . (This, of course, was written before the British occupation of Madagascar). SIGNS OF SECRET AGREEMENT. On one side the United Nations understandingly lack confidence in the Vichy regime’s vaccilating and obscure policies. On the other side Nazi Germany and the Japanese are goading Petain to join them wholeheartedly. But Vichy manoeuvres for a way out by playing both ends from the middle. Is the situation an indication of a secret agreement to give the Axis all possible aid in the Colonies? Vichy’s policy of clinging desperately to France’s empire because they hold it sacred French soil —an indivisible France of 100 million scattered Frenchmen of all races that will grow and live forever —looks merely like a combination of absolutist neutrality and fanatical nationalism raised to the dignity of a great national policy. It is what prompts the Vichy cry of defending France and its empire against any attacker.

Patterns of world realignment being forced by the war seem now to loom sufficiently clear to discern that it will be impossible for France’s empire to escape their powerful impact. The conflict can hardly leave it intact, as Vichy’s neutral dream so blandly visualises. Today’s demand is for an end of selfishness in the conduct of colonial empires. The Atlantic Charter, whose ideals will be made possible through the United Nations victory, makes this quite plain.