FRANCE: New Generalissimo

"Papist!" stormed leading French news-organs of the Left last week at brilliant, bowlegged little General Max Weygand. He is as good a Roman Catholic as was his patron Marshal Ferdinand Foch who used to speak of him as "Max, my spiritual son." Last week as the climax of a long and masterly campaign of military intrigue (TIME, Jan. 13, 1930), General Weygand forced out Marshal Pétain and assumed the office which carries with it supreme command of the French Army. This office has a highly technical title: "Vice President of the Higher War Council." More imposing sounds the office from which bowlegged Max was promoted: "Chief of the General Staff."

"The most odious reactionaries ordered this appointment!" stormed Le Populaire (Socialist). "At no moment in the history of the Third Republic, not even at the time of the Dreyfus affair, has any general so hostile to the Republic been elevated to this post. . . . General Weygand is ready for a coup d'etat at the head of the Army!"

Rather than try to think up super-scorching things to say about Foch's spiritual son, the editor of L'Oeuvre (Radical) merely quoted these words from Clemenceau : "Weygand is a dangerous man, capa ble in moments of crisis of going far. . . .

He is sunk in the priests, naturally, to the neck!"

It was Clemenceau who called Foch to the supreme command. On that historic occasion General Foch shifted uneasily in his chair, then blurted out: "I don't suppose you know that I have a brother who is a Jesuit?"

The brows of Tiger Clemenceau, possibly the greatest atheist who ever lived, contracted and he banged his fist upon the table.

"Damn your brother!" he roared, and upon this broadminded basis Foch accepted the Tiger's flattering offer. Later, on one of Clemenceau's famed dashes to the front, he arrived at the headquarters of the Generalissimo, only to be told that Foch was kneeling in a nearby tent at Mass.

"Shall I—do you desire me to disturb him?" stammered a devout aide.

"No, let him alone," said Clemenceau, "that sort of thing works well with him."

To work Marshal Pétain, 74, gracefully out of his post last week and make room for General Weygand, 64, the War Ministry declared that "Marshal Pétain has sought retirement for several years," but that even now he cannot be spared. He was asked last week "to contribute his great experience and high authority to a new task as difficult as it is delicate." The task: to arrange coordination between the Ministries of Air, War and Navy in such a way as to provide in war time a complete and rational air barrier around the whole of France.

Oddly enough, General Weygand, who will not tackle this job but will leave it to Marshal Pétain, is one of the best co-ordinators French militarism has ever produced. His star turn during the War was to mingle with and co-ordinate the "allied" military leaders who so easily quarreled with the French command to which they were subordinate under Generalissimo