FRANCE: Justice at Riom

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In Riom's old Palais de Justice, which is no more than a county courthouse, France's great war-guilt trial opened with pomp last week. In the small courtroom of the Auvergne Court of Appeals on plush-covered seats sat the seven members of France's newly constituted Supreme Court: Chief Justice Pierre Caous wearing a white ermine mantle, the two military justices, General Andre Wateau and Admiral O. B. Herr, in their dress uniforms, four lay justices in red robes and black-&-gold-braided caps. Above the heads of the Court was a bust of Marianne.

The opening proceedings took exactly eight minutes. Clerk of the Court Greffier Jardel read the oath: "Do you swear honestly and faithfully to fulfill your duties, to guard religiously the secrets of the deliberations, and to act throughout as a worthy and loyal magistrate?" One after another the seven justices said: "Je jure." Then Chief Justice Caous adjourned the court. The long and painstaking inquiry into the responsibility for France's defeat was scheduled to begin this week.

But behind the façade of justice erected by the rulers at Vichy less dignified machinations were in progress last week. It was far from certain that the trials would proceed to an orderly conclusion, far from certain that life imprisonment would be the severest penalty meted out to the ex-leaders of France. In 1871, after France's previous defeat, Frenchmen vented their feelings in violence. In that year the strong-man Government of Louis-Adolphe Thiers was afraid to stay in Paris, where the left-wing Commune soon seized power. The Government and the Commune executed between them more than 40,000 people. Among the Commune's victims were two hapless generals, Claude-Martin Lecomte and Clément Thomas, shot as "enemies of the people"; Archbishop Darboy of Paris and Curé Deguerry of the Madeleine, with four Jesuit fathers; batches of right-wing hostages (see cuts). In 1871 the Germans who occupied France were interested spectators. This year they may even have an interest in encouraging disorder and violence.

By last week German designs on France were beginning to show themselves. As Alsace and Lorraine were Germanized (see p. 30) the Berlin press devoted itself to a discussion of the "rebirth of Flemish nationality," which looked suspiciously like the first move to incorporate Northern France into the new Flemish State that Adolf Hitler planned long ago (TIME, June 3). And to Vichy, as Hitler's Ambassador, went young (37) Otto Abetz, who was kicked out of France last year after four years of trying to promote an under standing between the Nazis and French Leftist intellectuals.

Nazi Abetz, whose wife is a Frenchwoman, ignored conservatives of the Laval-Pétain type, concentrated on such totalitarian-minded Leftists as Gaston Bergery, who launched the phrase "200 families." whose wife is a daughter of Bolshevik Leonid Krassin. Last week Abetz was rumored in Vichy to be the coming strong man of France. That Adolf Hitler would not mind seeing the Pétain Government overthrown was evident when the Berlin radio in a series of broadcasts characterized the men of Vichy as "hyenas tearing at the carcass of dead France," as "buzzards who eat one of their own kind."*