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previous: Chapter 10 This webpage reproduces part of Giraud and the African Scene by G. Ward Price The Macmillan Company, 1944 The text is in the public domain. This text has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 12

 p242  Chapter XI

Tug-of‑war
between Giraud and De Gaulle

All through the early months of 1943 Giraud was waging two campaigns. One consisted of the part which his troops hand taking in the operations of the Allied Army in Tunisia. The other was a political controversy with De Gaulle.

To the world at large the latter was much the less edifying spectacle. It seemed extraordinary that two French generals, alike animated by the highest patriotic spirit, could not, without months of argument, devise a system for combining their efforts to serve their own countriesº and the cause of the Allied nations which were helping France to regain her freedom. This was a discouraging omen of what might be expected in France when the liberation of its territory would make it possible for that country to reorganise its national affairs.

The explanation is to be found, partly in the formalist character of the French mind, and partly in the contrast of temperament between the two leaders.

Americans or British, confronted with a similar problem of devising an interim organisation of national authority, would proceed by the empirical method. They would agree upon one or two principles and leave the details to be worked out as things went along. Frenchmen prefer to see the whole scheme down on paper before they begin to put it into operation.

The rivalry which helped to delay agreement between the two French leaders was largely due to uneasy suspicions in the mind of General de Gaulle. He could not forget that he had not been taken into the confidence of the State Department about their protracted negotiations with the French Liberationists at Algiers, and with Giraud himself in France. Was there, even now, something more that he did not know?

 p243  In settling the basis of his future cooperation with General Giraud, who had so unexpectedly emerged as leader of another movement similar to his own, De Gaulle wanted to have everything cut-and‑dried before he committed himself.

At the Casablanca Conference it had been arranged that these leaders of the two wings of la France belligérante should each dispatch a liaison mission to the other. On this, an understanding was reached in principle. In practice, the difficulty at once arose that neither was willing to delegate to subordinates authority for negotiating on political questions. The functions of this coordinating machinery were thus restricted to military, economic and financial problems.

As a first step to establishing such contact, General Catroux arrived in Algiers early in February from London, where he had been for consultation. He went on to Syria to wind up his responsibilities as Delegate-General there.

Weeks went by without any link between the generals being established. It began to look as though even the modest degree of cooperation arranged at Casablanca might not materialise.

Giraud was once more busy with the problems of military training, reequipment and the supervision of the operations of his troops at the front. These matters always held first place in his mind.

The result was that political affairs tended to fall more and more into the hands of the subordinates whom he inherited from Admiral Darlan.

Giraud's dismissal of Châtel from the governor­ship of Algeria on January 19th was welcomed as a breach with the Vichy tradition, but Americans, British, and Fighting French alike regarded the nomination of Peyrouton to that post as a dubious improvement. Vichy reacted to this appointment by depriving both the new Governor-General and his predecessor, together with Generals Noguès and Juin, of their French nationality.

The British and American ministers in Algiers understood the need for also getting rid of General Noguès, Resident-General in Morocco, and General Bergeret, Darlan's Deputy High Commissioner, who had stayed on as Giraud's Secretary-General.

 p244  Giraud complied to the extent of abolishing the "Imperial Council" which Darlan had brought into being. He called it to a session which continued from February 2nd to 5th, and was attended by the heads of the three provinces of Algeria, Morocco and French West Africa, together with General Bergeret.

After three days' deliberation, the Imperial Council was replaced by a Consultative War Committee.

It was at this time that Giraud ceased to be High Commissioner, and assumed the title of Civil and Military Commander-in‑Chief.

The War Committee was defined as consisting of the political heads of territories and whatever person the Commander-in‑Chief saw fit to appoint as his Secretary-General. It was to meet once a month. Another body brought into existence simultaneously was the High Economic Council, whose purpose was to be the stimulation of production in North Africa.

Each Resident or Governor-General was to designate five French or native members to represent his province on this body, and the Council was to meet every three months.

Besides these committees, Giraud had both a military and civilian staff, the latter being under his Secretary-General. The Commander-in‑Chief issued a motto which was to inspire the new administration that he thus brought into existence. It was: "Make war in every department." (Dans tous les domaines, faire la guerre.)​a

As soon as the new machinery was in working order, it began to reflect Giraud's thoroughgoing acceptance of democratic ideals, and to discredit the charge of reactionary views which had been brought against him in radio-talks and newspaper reports. In his address to the High Economic Council on March 1st, Giraud made his first full political declaration.

He declared that victory was his only objective. Order, therefore, must reign everywhere. For that reason it was necessary to abstain from political dissension.

"Frenchmen must deliver France with the help of the British and Americans," he went on. "In external politics I adhere with all my heart to the Atlantic Charter. Its principles have been proclaimed by France throughout her history. I do not believe in the necessity of  p245 revolution. I do believe in the absolute necessity of practical reforms, allotting to the State and the individual their respective places and responsibilities. I believe in social justice. I believe in the cooperation of classes, not in their barren struggle. I believe in the work of the official hierarchy, and in the value and importance of maintaining an élite. I believe in the rise of the humblest to the highest positions in accordance with merit. I believe in youth, gaiety and good humour. I refuse to believe in jealousy and hatred.

"Lastly, I believe in the Army and the magnificent example it sets. It is the finest school of equality in existence."

Giraud ended with the words: "I entered the Army to avenge 1870. I shall lead it to avenge 1940."

Towards the end of February, two other favourable developments occurred. The first echelon of the Catroux mission, representing De Gaulle, arrived in Algiers. It was led by Colonel Pechkoff of the Foreign Legion, the one‑armed son of the famous Russian novelist, Maxim Gorky. I had made his acquaintance in Morocco ten years before, and shall always remember the spectacle of agility which this mutilated but active and determined man used to present when mounting a restive pony. With his right and only hand on the saddle, and the reins held in his teeth, he would hop round after his twisting mount and spring lightly onto its back.

The other well-omened event was the invitation extended by Giraud to M. Jean Monnet to return from Washington and join his staff in Algiers.

Monnet stood in high repute with both the American and British Governments. During the opening months of the war he had been the head of the French Purchasing Commission in London. When France collapsed, he did not join De Gaulle's Free French, but volunteered his services to the Allied cause, with the result that he was appointed by the British Government to a post on the Purchasing Commission sent to the United States to negotiate for supplies of war material. Though remaining a Frenchman, Monnet virtually became a member of the British Embassy Staff in Washington.

When the Allied landing in North Africa took place, he offered his services to Giraud, and, from the time of his arrival in Algiers at  p246 the end of February, the effects of his good influence began to be manifest. He urged upon the General the importance of making a clear break with those vestiges of the Vichy regime by which he was still surrounded, and the desirability of reverting to the laws and principles of the Third Republic as they had existed before the armistice.

On February 23rd, De Gaulle's "French National Committee" in London addressed to Giraud the first of the series of political memoranda by which the two leaders continued, through the spring, to exchange arguments and refutations without perceptibly drawing nearer to agreement.

One would expect soldiers to be realists, seeking practical solutions. Yet the two Generals disputed and debated abstract constitutional problems with as much ardour as the Early Fathers of the Church displayed in discussing the sex of angels. Their example gives the measure of what may be expected when the constitutional lawyers and politicians of France are at liberty to take up the same controversy.

The outstanding measures demanded by the National Committee's memorandum of February 23rd were:

1. Repudiation of the armistice with Germany;

2. Restoration of the rights of the individual;

3. Repeal of Vichy legislation;

4. Public declaration that the future French Government must be chosen by the French people; and

5. The formation in the interim of a Joint Consultative Committee.

Giraud's reply to this document was publicly delivered, and proved unexpectedly accommodating. He abandoned all the reservations he had hitherto maintained, and accepted practically all the points advanced in the memorandum, announcing that he would hand over to the proposed Consultative Committee his entire political authority.

The moderating influence of Monnet was largely responsible for this gratifying definition of Giraud's standpoint. Monnet, in his turn,  p247 had been subjected to urgent representations from the British and American Ministers, Macmillan and Murphy.

It was obvious that no further objection could be raised against Giraud as being a reactionary. He had fully and frankly proclaimed his republican principles.

It was confirmed by Giraud's speech of March 14th that no further difference separated the French regime in North Africa from the French National Committee in London, except that regarding the respective priority of the two leaders.

The occasion chosen by General Giraud for these important declarations was a mass meeting organised by Alsatians and Lorrainers in Algiers to protest against Germany's incorporation of those French provinces in the Reich. It was held in the large amphitheatre of the Government building, which is an edifice in the modern factory style, standing at the top of a monumental flight of steep steps leading up from the central square of the city. Giraud attended in state, with an escort of Spahis in their long white cloaks, mounted on grey Moorish barbs.

The platform was filled with the leading citizens of the North African capital. Mr. Robert Murphy and Mr. Harold Macmillan were both there to note the evidence of progress towards the realisation of that policy of reconciliation which they had been preaching for three months past.

Giraud read his speech to an appreciative audience of several thousands. He spoke through a microphone. His rather high-pitched, monotonous voice does not lend itself to oratory. But his words were moving, especially to Frenchmen who had met to register their grief at the loss of two provinces which their fathers had regained twenty-five years earlier.

One had to be in the great assembly hall of the Government building at Algiers, where the speech was delivered, to appreciate the enthusiasm which Giraud's confidence generated among his French hearers. It was the first powerful, personally delivered dose of optimism that they had received from a leader of their own nation, and Giraud went on to forecast the progress of France's complete recovery.

Giraud ended on an unexpected note. The sincerity of his emotion gave a tremor to his voice, and one could feel the response to it among the people who filled the crowded hall.

In politics, there is often a long interval between words and action. General Giraud took only three days to implement his declarations of Sunday, March 14th. On the following Wednesday he issued a series of ordinances giving effect to his announcement that all Vichy legislation would be cancelled.

This was done in one swoop, but to avoid the consequence that French North Africa would find itself without the necessary legislation for the conduct of its affairs, the general laws in force since June 22, 1940, as distinct from racial and discriminatory edicts, were provisionally revalidated for a period of two months, during which a commission was to examine as to whether they were in conformity with the political principles in force in France before the armistice with Germany.

 p251  Giraud's speech of March 14th, and the action which followed upon it, proved to be a turning-point in the French North African situation — though a working agreement between him and De Gaulle was not reached as quickly as then seemed likely.

Giraud was not to blame for that, since he made a further series of frank concessions to De Gaulle's imperious demands. General Bergeret was dismissed from his key position as Secretary-General, and was sent to command the French Air Force in West Africa. This post he also lost when De Gaulle insisted upon the removal of M. Boisson from the Governorship of that colony — a measure which many thought mistaken, for Boisson was an excellent administrator who had maintained the integrity of his colonial territory against German and Italian penetration. Bergeret, in October, 1943, was charged with treasonable activities before the Allied landing.

Another important change on Giraud's staff was the dropping of the reactionary M. Rigault, the official in charge of information and Press relations. He was succeeded by General Chambre, who, though not an outstanding personality, relaxed many of the restrictions which had been imposed upon the North African Press by the Vichy administration.

Giraud's firm hand on the helm was also felt when he abruptly dismissed a senior official of the Algerian Government who had published in the Algerian Gazette some new anti-Jewish regulations issued at Vichy. It was at once announced on the radio that such decrees had no validity in North Africa.

Just before the end of March, General Catroux at last arrived in Algiers to take up his permanent quarters there as General de Gaulle's representative.

From that time forward the two French movements cooperating with the Allies, if not yet combined, were at any rate in contact.

De Gaulle announced in a broadcast from London that he would soon be going to North Africa "to meet General Giraud, a great soldier and noble figure." Together they would seek and find, he said, the means "to ensure that the French Empire shall be but one empire; that French strength shall be but one strength, and that the voice of the French people who fight shall be heard in the world  p252 as one voice and, above all, that this Empire, this strength and this voice shall be those desired by the nation."

General Catroux at this time informed me that the chief obstacle outstanding between the two leaders was the question of personalities, though he admitted that much had been done to "purge" the North African administration of the spirit of Vichy.

He expressed doubts about the complete reliability of Giraud's forces in North Africa, on the ground that some of his troops had fought against De Gaulle's men in Syria. Many of the senior officers, he said, still felt that they had pledged their allegiance to Pétain. Although they were fighting well against the Germans in Tunisia, this was only because they had been ordered into action by Giraud, whose authority they recognised on the ground that it could be traced back, indirectly, to the Marshal.

General Catroux thought that this sentiment of military honour was worthy of respect. He said that those soldiers who persisted in maintaining a collaborationist standpoint must, of course, be eliminated, but his own view was that the actions which certain officers had committed in the past under stress of circumstances should not be too closely scrutinised.

I asked Catroux to define the kind of regime which De Gaulle had in mind in his negotiations with Giraud.

He said that it should consist of a Consultative Council, constituted by the Governors and Resident-Generals of the various territories. There should also be another nominated council of influential people to look after economic questions.

The headquarters of the principal consultative body would be in Algiers, and he regarded its main function as the representation of France in external affairs. Local autonomy would continue in the respective parts of the French Colonial Empire, but it was essential that there should be a central body representing France, and exercising her right to join in the councils of the Allied nations while the war was still going on. He thought that this body might appoint diplomatic representatives in the principal Allied capitals.

He deprecated the idea of holding elections in wartime, pointing out that Britain had done without them for seven years.

 p253  On March 31st, Giraud handed Catroux his detailed reply to De Gaulle's memorandum of February 23rd. This was a long document, and in the main conceded all the points that the French National Committee in London had raised.

Giraud agreed to the repeal of all Vichy legislation — which had, as a matter of fact, been largely carried out already.

He did, however, raise an entirely new point by proposing to define in advance the machinery by which the future French Government should be created by the people of that country when the hour of freedom came. Giraud wanted to prescribe the legal method for bringing such a Government into being. In this connection he invoked an almost forgotten law of the Third Republic, passed in 1872 and known as the Loi Tréveneuc.

This law had been introduced into the Chamber of Deputies by a member of that name, and its purpose was to provide for the possible contingency of another revolution in France. At that time, the outbreak known as the Paris Commune, which followed upon the defeat of France by Germany in 1871, was still fresh in memory.

This law accordingly laid down the procedure to be followed in reconstituting a Government at a time when part of the national territory might be outside its control.

The routine specified in the Loi Tréveneuc was that the councillors of such French Departments as remained free should meet and form a National Assembly, on which this law conferred the power to appoint a legal Government.

The operative articles of the law read as follows:

By invoking this seventy-year‑old law, Giraud hoped to placate such Frenchmen as still supported the Vichy Government, and he was also obeying his own instinct for constitutional procedure.

Recourse to the Loi Tréveneuc may, indeed, have been suggested by some of those leading Frenchmen who had played a part at Vichy. Among them was M. Pierre Flandin, who was living in Algeria at the time, and who, at a chance meeting with myself, urged this solution.

M. Flandin had served Marshal Pétain as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he naturally favoured the retrospective recognition of the authority of the Vichy Government by whatever future regime an Allied victory might bring into existence.

He expressed the view that any arrangement about the future administration of France based on a personal agreement between General Giraud and General de Gaulle could be subsequently invalidated by the people of metropolitan France, who might not recognise its authority.

His contention was that, by abrogating en bloc all the laws passed by the Vichy administration, Giraud had, in fact, destroyed his own title as head of the French administration in North Africa, since that title depended, in the last analysis, upon an act of the Vichy Government.

He tried to establish this by the argument that the French National Assembly of July, 1940, had appointed Marshal Pétain to be Chief of the State. Pétain had nominated Darlan; Darlan had formed the Imperial Council, which, in turn, had elected Giraud as Darlan's successor. By openly repudiating Vichy, Flandin suggested, Giraud's regime had become a mere de facto Government which could be replaced by another.

To this it was an obvious rejoinder that the French National Assembly of July, 1940, was not a legitimate body, since it met under the threat of German bayonets. On that point, M. Flandin replied that the Assembly met in the unoccupied part of France; that former  p255 Premiers like Reynaud and Blum, who took part in its deliberations, never made any protest that it was subject to outside pressure, and that the Vichy Government, brought into existence by this National Assembly, was recognised by the United States, which maintained Admiral Leahy as their Ambassador to it for two years subsequently.

Flandin pointed out that, of the 99 French Departments with representatives in the Chamber of Deputies, ten are colonial. These are:

Of these, Cochin-China was then under Japanese occupation, while Guadeloupe and Martinique were still nominally under Vichy. M. Flandin argued, however, that enough departmental councillors could be called together to form the basis of a National Assembly, although it would not be possible to fulfil the stipulations of Article 3 of the law that half the departments of France should be represented.

When De Gaulle received Giraud's new memorandum, embodying this proposal, his objection to it was based on different grounds. He pointed out that no departmental councillors had been elected in France since the year 1939. The more vigorous and courageous of these local politicians might well have been carried off or suppressed by the Germans, so that those still available as electors of a new National Assembly might be expected to be the feeblest and least patriotic of their category.

On receiving this new manifesto from Giraud, De Gaulle began to urge that they must have a personal meeting to hammer out their differences of opinion.

This suggestion was regarded with misgiving, not only by the United States and British Governments, but by De Gaulle's principal adviser, General Catroux, himself. All these alike felt that the prospects of agreement being reached by direct negotiation between the  p256 two principals was small. It was now more than two months since the handshake at Casablanca. General Giraud had since then made considerable concessions. He had accepted De Gaulle's point of view on all major questions of principle. The only factor which still kept the two French patriotic organisations from combining into a single unit was the temperamental incompatibility of their respective leaders.

Those whose duty had compelled them to follow closely these wearisome transactions — such as the Allied diplomatic envoys, Mr. Robert Murphy and Mr. Harold Macmillan — were at one with the moderate advisers of both protagonists in believing that a definite agreement should be reached before they again met face to face. Otherwise, De Gaulle's impulsive character might lead to a sudden rupture of the discussions, resulting in another deadlock.

In addition to this consideration, the fact had also to be borne in mind that the Allies were preparing to start their big drive for Tunis in mid‑April. It was obviously undesirable that the military campaign should be complicated by a French political crisis at the Army's base in Algiers.

In a country where only 10 per cent of the population is European, there is always danger of political disturbances engendering racial clashes.

The differences between the respective supporters of the two generals in North Africa were so clearly marked that dissension between the leaders, if it were to occur, might result in rioting among their respective followers.

These could, indeed, be characterised as Conservative and Radical. Giraud's supporters favoured strong governmental authority. Some of them had monarchist inclinations. They were predominantly Catholic and "Right wing."

The De Gaullists in North Africa had generally been supporters of the advanced "Left wing," Front Populaire. They were Communist by instinct, and looked to Russia for inspiration.

Many of them were Jews. In French North Africa there is a strong anti-Semitic sentiment, due to the fact that local Jews had played the game of provincial and municipal politics with success. The  p257 prospect of the recovery of political power by the Jews as a result of the victory of De Gaullist principles might have led to trouble in North Africa, especially in Oran, where this issue was particularly acute.

In view of these facts, General Eisenhower, as Allied Commander-in‑Chief, sent a message to De Gaulle requesting him not to come to Algiers for the time being.

The French General did not take this suggestion well. He had recently announced his impending arrival, accompanied by several "national commissioners." To his mind it now seemed that the American State Department, whose attitude towards Darlan had already inspired him with mistrust, was trying to keep him out of his due share in the restoration of France.

This suspicion was entirely unfounded, Eisenhower's intervention having been inspired solely by the desire to avoid political disturbances, but it led to a minor crisis in the relations between De Gaulle and the Allied Governments, which again retarded the long-delayed settlement.

Further friendly gestures by Giraud helped to tide over this difficult period. In the first place, he appointed for the first time a professed De Gaullist to be a member of his staff.

This was Dr. Abadie, who was made Secretary of the Interior. Dr. Abadie was a well-known medical man of Oran, who had become an intimate personal friend of Giraud when the General was in command of the division stationed in that town.

The qualities of Dr. Abadie for conducting the internal affairs of French North Africa did not include previous administrative experience. He was, however, a man of outstanding intelligence, wide reading and strength of character.

He had furthermore been a great traveller, especially in Russia.

Another development favourable to the achievement of an understanding between the two generals was the arrival in Algiers, as a financial collaborator in Giraud's administration, of M. Couve de Murville.

Bearing a name distinguished in the financial history of France, M. de Murville was a young man who had been employed before  p258 the war in negotiations with the British Treasury. This key‑department of the British Government formed a high opinion of his integrity and intelligence.

M. de Murville continued in the service of the Vichy Government after the fall of France, until March, 1942. During that time he continued, at some risk to himself, to keep in touch with British Governmental circles through contacts that he maintained with the British Embassy in Madrid on the official journeys which he made to the Spanish capital.

In this way the background of General Giraud's regime continued to lose that reactionary, Vichy-minded character with which De Gaulle had originally reproached it.

After General Eisenhower's virtual ban on a direct meeting between the two leaders in Algiers, General Catroux travelled back to London, to draft, in consultation with his chief, yet another rejoinder to Giraud's last memorandum.

This document was dispatched on April 15th. In it, De Gaulle raised the point which was to prove the final subject of contention between himself and Giraud. He laid it down that the Commander-in‑Chief of the French forces must be definitely subordinated to the central political authority. This, he argued, was required by the Republican constitution of France, where, except in the consular and Imperial epoch, the military authority had always been under the orders of the political government.

Giraud's reply was to invite General de Gaulle to meet him either at Marrakesh, or at Biskra in southern Algeria. He suggested that the discussions between them should be carried on quietly in one of the remoter towns, and that only after agreement had been reached, and the union of their two parties been established, should he and De Gaulle come to Algiers.

By this time it was plain that De Gaulle possessed a strong and active body of supporters in Algiers. His emblem of the "Lorraine Cross" began to appear on sale in the shop windows. Many young men wore it in their buttonholes. The same sign, with the inscription "Vive de Gaulle !" began to be painted on the street walls at night,  p259 often being scrawled across the pictures of General Giraud posted up by his propaganda service.

Giraud, in his difficult task of carrying on the administration of North Africa, had unavoidably alienated some local interests. All such discontented sections of the community stood behind De Gaulle, since, being without administrative responsibility in that region, he had not aroused similar resentment. Moreover, to the highly cosmopolitan population of Algiers, De Gaulle appeared as a romantic, mystical figure whose remoteness added to its appeal.

Even in the French North African Army, which was under Giraud's direct orders, some exasperation was caused by the fact that a number of the senior officers had been maintained in their posts although, when under Vichy, they had shown no sympathy for the Allied cause.

The wide publicity given to the gallant defence, by a Fighting French force, of the outpost of Bir Hakim in the Italian Desert had earned for De Gaulle's troops a military prestige which could not be achieved in the useful but monotonous and discouraging task of holding on, with inadequate weapons, to mountain posts in Tunisia, which Giraud's African troops were called upon to fulfil.

The knowledge that he possessed this extensive local support may perhaps have influenced De Gaulle in standing out for Algiers as the only place where he would consent to carry on personal negotiations. His insistence on this point aroused apprehension among some of Giraud's staff lest De Gaulle's arrival might be followed by an attempt at a coup d'état on the part of his supporters. The De Gaullists, on the other hand, were saying that, when Giraud had got his new army material, he would be in a position to play the part of General Franco in France.

Visiting General Giraud at his headquarters while this question of his proposed meeting with De Gaulle was being vigorously debated, I asked him why he did not favour De Gaulle's desire to come to Algiers. His reply was drily humorous.

"You may have seen something of the large De Gaullist demonstration that was held here last Sunday," he said. "Some of the  p260 demonstrators sang the Marseillaise. I entirely approve of that! Others sang the Chant du Départ [a military ballad]. Quite satisfactory! Others again shouted 'Vive de Gaulle !' No objection. But some of them cried 'Death to Giraud!' I don't approve of that at all!"

But now the Allied campaign in North Africa was plainly approaching its victorious close. Both generals realised that the continuance of their differences was making a bad impression on foreign public opinion. Wearily but patiently, the American and British diplomatists, Mr. Robert Murphy and Mr. Harold Macmillan, continued their attempts to mediate between Giraud's headquarters and the De Gaullist mission headed by Catroux.

On May 4, 1943, De Gaulle made a statement in London, urging that Algiers must be the scene of the consultations necessary for the establishment of a joint French central authority. "We are ready to go there, immediately and without delay," he said.

After the capture of Tunis of May 7th, the objection raised by the Allied General Staff to a political convention being held at the Base headquarters of the whole western theatre of war was allowed to lapse. De Gaulle dispatched a final letter to Giraud on May 10th recording the measure of agreement that had been reached between them, but reiterating the claim that military command of French forces must be subordinated to political control. He again urged a meeting in the North African capital.

To this Giraud replied a week later, agreeing that union of his regime with the Fighting French movement should take place immediately. He proposed the formation of a Joint Central Executive Committee, to meet in Algiers, presided over by himself and De Gaulle on alternate days. He suggested that each of them should nominate two members of this committee, making six in all, while three seats should be left vacant, to be filled later. On the question of political control of military matters, Giraud urged that the position of the Commander-in‑Chief should be settled by this committee.

"Our preliminary discussions are closed," concluded Giraud. "Let us pass to action and unite." These practical propositions were accepted.

General de Gaulle arrived in Algiers on May 30th, accompanied  p261 by his first two nominees to the joint committee, M. René Massigli, a former French Ambassador to Turkey, with a long diplomatic experience at the Foreign Ministry, and M. André Philip, Fighting French Commissioner for the Interior and for Labour.

Consultations began between the two Generals next day and, as a propitiatory sacrifice, M. Peyrouton, the Governor-General of Algeria, always a bête noire to De Gaulle, laid down his office, stating that he did so in the hope of bringing about union among all Frenchmen. General Catroux succeeded him, while M. Puaux, formerly High Commissioner in Syria, became Resident-General in Morocco.

General de Gaulle and his two followers belonging to the Joint Executive Committee at once took up an uncompromising attitude about the position of the French Commander-in‑Chief. They said that General Giraud could not both hold this post and be a member of the Committee. They suggested that another Commander-in‑Chief should be appointed. Arguments on this subject went on for some weeks.

Ultimately, at the end of June, General Eisenhower again intervened in the interests of the Allied Army. He sent for the two French generals and informed them that it was necessary, for military reasons, that Giraud should retain the command of the French troops in North Africa.

This step was taken because the American Government and General Staff were satisfied with Giraud's record as a loyal and resolute ally. Eisenhower knew that the appointment of another French Commander-in‑Chief would automatically be followed by a political "purge" of the upper ranks of the French Army. This could not fail to have a disturbing effect upon their troops, and might therefore imperil the security of the Allied bases in North Africa at a time when a new and difficult campaign was being organised against Sicily.

There was no attempt on the part of the United States to dictate to the French as to who should command their troops, or as to the relation­ship in which the Commander-in‑Chief should stand to the political authority. The French Army in North Africa formed part  p262 of an Allied force under the supreme authority of General Eisenhower, and he was fully within his rights in asserting his wishes with regard to the leader­ship of a detachment of his own international forces.

The effect of Eisenhower's intimation was to bring about another compromise. De Gaulle would not give way in his contention that the French Commander-in‑Chief must be subordinated to the Executive Committee. Giraud maintained his right both to command the troops and to be one of the committee's alternating presidents.

The temporary solution was accordingly adopted that there should be no fusion of the Fighting French forces with the French North African troops. Each general was to remain in command of his own contingent as before, while the Central Executive Committee tried to devise an acceptable basis for their amalgamation.

This unsatisfactory arrangement revived the old rivalry between the Fighting French Movement and the French Army in North Africa. It did not commend itself even to the respective adherents of the two Commanders-in‑Chief concerned. General Juin, Giraud's immediate military subordinate, joined with the Admirals Auboyneau and Collinet, commanding the respective naval forces of the two parties, to urge the Executive Council to lose no time in bringing this protracted dispute to an end.

At length, in July, 1943, an arrangement was agreed upon that General Giraud should be sole Commander-in‑Chief of all French military forces, but should preside over the Executive Council only when it was discussing military affairs, and not, as hitherto, alternately with General de Gaulle. Whenever the Committee was concerned only with political or economic matters, General de Gaulle was to be in the chair.

On July 3rd, General Giraud left for North America, on a visit to Ottawa and Washington. His modesty of bearing produced a favourable reaction among those he met there, although some contrasted his cautious reticence with De Gaulle's eloquence in proclaiming the future liberation of France.

Mr. Robert Murphy said of Giraud's tour: "He made an excellent  p263 impression. His soldierly appearance, his manifest honesty, the aim that he is pursuing, and his adventurous career all combined to inspire confidence." This was particularly the case with the military and naval authorities of the United States, who were grateful to him for his loyal collaboration during the months preceding the victory in Tunisia.

It had been announced at the White House that Giraud's visit was an official one, made as the guest of the Government, and that he would be received by the President in his military capacity as French Commander-in‑Chief rather than as one of the two leaders of the Committee of National Liberation.

Speaking "as a soldier representing France at war," General Giraud told the Press in Washington that he and General de Gaulle were united on the aim of defeating the Axis forces, giving France her freedom and "returning to a political structure in conformity with the natural aspirations of our country."

He announced that the military contribution furnished by French North Africa to the allied campaign in Europe would be an expeditionary force of 300,000 men, including those who had served under General de Gaulle. In addition to these, a garrison, estimated at about 100,000 men, would remain in North Africa.

Of the expeditionary force, 125,000 would be French, 55,000 Senegalese, 50,000 Moroccans and 70,000 Algerians and Tunisians.

A day or two later, addressing cadets of the Military Academy in New York, Giraud said that some French troops had already landed in Sicily. He gave a pledge that French soldiers would be by the side of the United States forces in the Pacific area until Japan also had been crushed.

From the statement issued by President Roosevelt on July 14th, the national festival of France, it was evident that he and General Giraud were of one mind about the future course of French political development, which had been the subject of so much negotiation among Frenchmen themselves.

The fundamental principles guiding the democracies, said the President, were evolved from the American and French revolutions, and the keystone of their democratic structure was the principle  p264 which placed governmental authority in the people alone. There could be one symbol only for Frenchmen — France herself — and she transcended all parties, personalities and groups. One of the Allies' war aims, as set forth in the Atlantic Charter, was to restore the mastery of their destiny to the peoples now under the invader's yoke.

"In the freedom of tomorrow," declared Mr. Roosevelt, "when Frenchmen and their brothers-in‑arms of the United Nations have cleansed French soil of the enemy, the French people will again give expression to that freedom in the erecting of a Government of their own free choice."

On that same date, Premier Stalin took advantage of the occasion to send a radio message to the two Generals, expressing the conviction that "the day of common victory over Hitlerite Germany and of the liberation and restoration of a free, democratic and independent France is near at hand."

During the week he spent in the United States, Giraud had an opportunity of hearing some echoes of the propaganda that had been made against him from North African sources at the time when he took over the succession of Darlan. World events move so quickly that the general public in the great democratic countries is often unable to keep up‑to-date in its information. First impressions tend to crystallise into permanency, and when once a label is attached to a public man it adheres as firmly as the stickers of a traveller's suitcase. It must have surprised Giraud, with his record of active aid to the Allied cause during the Tunisian campaign, to find himself still regarded, by some sections of American opinion, as "pro‑Vichy" or even "pro‑German."

A tendency also persisted to consider him in the light of a rival to De Gaulle, though the speech which the leader of the original "Fighting French" Movement delivered on that July 14th in Algiers was sufficient proof of the harmony of ideals and methods that had already been reached between the two.

"France is not a sleeping beauty, who will one day be gently awakened," said De Gaulle. "She has got to fight for her freedom,  p265 and today her people are united in one desire — to wage war until we are free. Never before have the under­ground organisations been so numerous or highly developed. Nothing can separate France from the American people, for French resistance and United States power are inspired by the same principles."

De Gaulle went one step further than his associate leader in forecasting the form which the postwar Government of France may be expected to assume. The French people would not agree, he said, to return to the regime which failed when the armies failed, or to accept a system of oppression and denunciation. The Fourth Republic would demand that it be respected, not exploited, and Frenchmen did not intend to emerge from the war only to plunge again into civil strife.

General Giraud — who had told Canadians in Ottawa that "Germany is beaten. All that is left for her is to recognise her defeat" — arrived in England on July 10th. He was received by the King, and later delivered a broadcast to the French people which furnished further confirmation of the reconciliation of the two branches of the French Freedom Movement.

"I am speaking to you from London," he said, "before a microphone through which a band of French patriots has constantly been giving you reasons for confidence; from London, where General de Gaulle rallied the heroic vanguard of the army of liberation; from London, which bears the honourable scars of enemy bombardment, and which was, in the very darkest days, the citadel of hope and resistance."

To the British public Giraud denied that there was in North Africa a Giraud army and a De Gaulle army; there was only the Army of France.

"Delays would be tragic," he went on, "for France is dying of hunger and each day sees her sufferings increase. A genuine and lasting peace must be secured, and the basis of a firm alliance between the democracies of France, Britain and the United States, together with Russia.

"In 1870 my father fought the Germans; in 1917 I fought the  p266 Germans; in 1940 my son fought the Germans — and the only hope that my grandson will not have to do the same in twenty years' time lies in the alliance of the democracies. It is for this reason that I have been to the United States as a beggar for arms; I have come to Europe also as a beggar, and I will beg anywhere for arms to enable my countrymen to fight for their freedom."

On July 14th General Giraud got back to Algiers.

August saw an important step in the development of the final public and official integration of the French Movement of Liberation, headed by Generals Giraud and De Gaulle, into the ranks of the United Nations. This was the formal recognition of the French Committee of National Liberation by the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Soviet Russia, China and Belgium.

The Committee now consisted of Generals Giraud and De Gaulle as Presidents, together with Generals Catroux and Georges, and MM. René Massigli, Jean Monnet, and André Philip as members.

© The Times The Committee of National Liberation in session at Algiers

It had defined its own functions on June 3rd as follows:

 p267  There was a slight difference between the terms in which the Governments of the United States and Great Britain defined their position towards the Committee of National Liberation, although the identity of the text in other respects showed that the two documents had been carefully collated.

In his announcement on August 16th, President Roosevelt expressly stated that the American attitude "does not constitute recognition of a Government of France or of the French Empire by the Government of the United States. It does constitute recognition of the French Committee of National Liberation as functioning within specific limitations during the war. Later on, the people of France, in a free and untrammelled manner, will proceed in due course to select their own Government."

Despite differences of phraseology, the purpose inspiring these formal recognitions by the Allied Powers was clearly the same. They had the effect of investing the Committee with a new authority.

Another incident which marked the closer ties steadily developing between the French and their Allies was the decoration of General Giraud and other French officers on August 14th by General Eisenhower with the Order of Merit. Giraud had already conferred on Eisenhower his own Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.

As the American Commander-in‑Chief pinned on the highest military decoration of the United States which can be bestowed on a foreigner, he said, "We have no decoration which is too high to be a tribute to the services which you have rendered in North Africa."

Before the announcement of the Armistice with Italy the new official standing of the Committee enabled it to come up to the Governments in London, Washington and Moscow "the position taken up by France regarding its stipulations."

The Committee set forth a statement of "the terms which it regards as indispensable for the safeguard of the vital interests of metropolitan France and her empire — interests which require the participation of France in any convention concerning Italy."

The next step, now that the Committee had attained international status, was to form a "Consultative Assembly" at Algiers. This was  p268 for the purpose of advising the Committee, and it was arranged that it should function on parliamentary lines, without, however, being elected. It was, in fact, "a skeleton parliament," and the undertaking was given that it would be dissolved directly an elected National Assembly could be created for the purpose of setting up a provisional Government. Its sessions were to be held every two months for a fortnight each time, or oftener if convoked by more than two‑thirds of its members.

These were to be eighty-four in number. Twenty of them were members of the Senate and Chamber of the last French Parliament before the armistice, who had come over to North Africa. Twelve members represented the General Councils of the three North African territories. The various organisations for resistance inside France had been asked to nominate, under great difficulties, another forty members, and the remaining twelve represented resistance organisations outside France.

The political basis of this assembly was broad. Of the twenty ex‑parliamentarians, for instance, seven belonged to Right Wing or Centre parties; five were Socialists, five Radicals, and three were Communists.

With the carrying of the war onto the European Continent came the opportunity which General Giraud had so long awaited of setting foot as a deliverer upon French territory.

On September 8th, the day that the surrender of the Italian Government was announced, a rising of French patriots broke out in Corsica. This had been under Italian occupation, but, as German confidence in the reliability of their allies declined, detachments of German troops were sent to hold the island.

During this occupation many Corsican patriots had "taken to the maquis," following the traditional example of those old‑time bandits who were half outlaws, half local heroes. In the great waste of scrub and mountain which makes up the interior of Corsica, they were able to hide almost unmolested, being supplied with food by peasant sympathisers.

Directly the wireless in Algiers announced the Italian armistice, a combatant group of these French patriots moved down from the  p269 maquis to the capital, Ajaccio, where they seized the town hall and the prefecture. Simultaneously, in all the towns and villages, the Vichy municipalities were turned out, and new councillors elected by the people.

The German garrison of Sardinia was now being evacuated to Corsica, where the two Italian divisions stationed in the island took up arms against it. On September 13th, French commandos from North Africa arrived, followed by other troops on September 17th. Within three days, the whole of the western part of Corsica had been reconquered, and the 10,000 Germans in the island were in full retreat on Bastia, the port at its northeastern corner.

From here they tried to get across to Leghorn by ship and aircraft, but both means of transport suffered heavily from the bombing of Allied planes.

On September 20th, General Giraud flew to Corsica, and spent three days there organising the situation from the military point of view. Six months before he had told me in Algiers that, with 20,000 men, he would undertake to recover Corsica himself. That achievement proved possible with even smaller forces, and the Allies thereby secured a potential air and military base for the invasion of southern France, lying only •one hundred and twenty miles from its objective.

---

Thayer's Note:

a The difficulties of translation! The author's rendering, in its context, suggests to the reader's mind such things as administrative departments, a connotation not in the French, and unintended. The usual translations, "in every field", "in every area", would suffer from similarly misleading connotations.

The French motto is suited to the genius of the language, which is strongly noun-oriented: so a noun naturally springs to the pen rather than the weak tout ("everything"). English, however, is a verb-oriented language: faced with the same choice and the same ambiguities to avoid, we would choose something like

"Wage war in everything we do".

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