FRANCE: Help Me!

France was in pain. Cold and the want of food and fuel were painful. And if millions of Frenchmen were anguished by collaboration with Germany, so was collaborating Marshal Henri Philippe Petain. He virtually begged Germany for mercy.

"In partial exile to which I am subjected," said he, "I strive to do all my duty. Each day I endeavor to wrest this country from the stagnation that threatens it. ... Help me!" Remarking that the new French Constitution was almost ready, he added: "But that document can only be dated from Paris and promulgated only on the moral of the liberation of national territory."

By implication he berated Germany's stooges in the Paris press: "It is my duty to call deserters all who in the press as on the radio, abroad and in France, resort to abject tasks. ..." To this the stooges replied with charges that Vichy was abandoning "collaboration while Paris is upholding it," that Marshal Petain had been listening too respectfully to U.S. Ambassador Admiral William D. Leahy.

There were, in fact, a few hints that Marshal Pétain might like to backtrack on collaboration, if he had the chance. But if the old Marshal was any less determined to make France a fascist-style totalitarian state, he did not say so. Instead, he said: "I do not want for my country either Marxism or liberal capitalism. The new order which is about to assume its place cannot be founded on anything but a severe internal order. ..."