Foreign News: End of an Expediency

• Share

The afternoon sun was streaking the white porticoes of the Palais d'Ete in Algiers. It was 3:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Before the pretentious entrance an official car drew up. Out of it stepped Admiral Jean François Darlan, High Commissioner for French North and West Africa, followed by his orderly. Admiral Darlan mounted the steps of the palace and disappeared inside. He was walking to his death.

Through the dark corridors to his office the Admiral strode briskly. He approached the anteroom where visitors waited for interviews. The door opened; a young man stepped into the hall. He aimed a revolver at the Admiral's face and pressed the trigger. The Admiral staggered, lunged forward, blood spurting from his mouth. A second shot. He fell, and lay still.

Down the corridor the Admiral's orderly had just turned into his room. At the sound of the shots he whirled, rushed back to meet the assassin running toward him. At point-blank range the assassin fired twice again. The orderly fell, a bullet in his thigh. But others had arrived; the gunman was overpowered.

The small, stocky form of Admiral Darlan was lifted from the bloody floor. Outside his car still waited. He was carried into it, driven to a hospital. But it was too late. When he was taken from his car, Jean Francois Darlan, the turncoat collaborationist, was dead.

The Tangled Skein. Death came to the Admiral just six weeks after he had taken over the government of French

North and West Africa with the backing of the U.S. command. His swift change of allegiance was one of the war's greatest surprises.

In his brief career at the side of the anti-Axis powers he had wrought good and evil. Dakar had fallen to the Allies without a shot. The progress of the U.S. campaign had been sped. But Darlan's assumption of power had also unleashed a storm of anger and criticism among Allied peoples, widening dangerously the already existing split between the supporters of Vichy and De Gaulle. It had involved the U.S. in a tangled skein of international politics which was becoming more & more involved. Termed by President Roosevelt a "temporary expediency," the Darlan regime was gaining a firmer foothold with each day.

Now the assassin's bullet had brought the opportunity for a new beginning. In death Admiral Darlan opened the way for French unity, which he had rendered impossible as long as he had a voice in French affairs.

Unity at Last. There was one man on whom the Fighting French, the British and the U.S. could agree. General Henri Honore Giraud, the old escapist, had been picked for this role before the U.S. forces landed, but when he reached North Africa Darlan was there ahead of him and he had voluntarily yielded to Darlan. Now it was a question whether those North African leaders who had remained loyal to Darlan and Vichy would accept Giraud as their chief.

The man who swung the deal in favor of Giraud was the same man who six weeks ago had forced the acceptance of Admiral Darlan. Astute, pro-Vichy General Auguste Nogues, as Resident General of Morocco, held in his hands the power to keep quiet or arouse the Arab tribes. If he said the wrong words, 60.000 Allied soldiers might have to fight a major military campaign in Morocco's bleak and rocky hills. But Nogues said the right words again. He agreed to recognize General Giraud as the new authority.