PETAIN TRIAL IMPINGES ON POLITICS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 21, 25 July 1945, Page 6

PETAIN TRIAL IMPINGES ON POLITICS

"The eyes of Europe," writes our special correspondent in London, "today are on Paris, where the trial of Petain has begun." Europe remembers how often French political affairs have been deflected by some great "trial such as that of Dreyfus, or by some cause celebre. Russia also has had her sensational trials—example, the purge—yet throughout she remains Russia. The German Nazis did more; they actually engineered their public scandals —example, the Reichstag fire —and turned them into favourable .political capital. But in France the shadow of a great trial is liable to overhang the country and the people for years—a lowering cloud like that of the injustice to Dreyfus, which cloud eventually bursts in a tempest unguided (or badly guided) by the Government, awaited with apprehension by the people, and ending in consequences unguessed. In just such a blind, fateful way France staggered against the Riom trials — arranged to placate the Germans during the occupation of France —and somehow managed to evade them, only to find herselfv still pursued by the shadow of a great prosecution coming from the opposite quarter. The German criminals who demanded Riom victims have themselves been swept away; and for a liberated France the stage is set at last for political/ and moral .reconstruction. But still a phantom of the old type : pursues the new France, because of the vitality of one of the most amazing octogenarians of history, the good-bad Petain, now dimming with a King Lear note the new and doubtful dawn of France's recovery. Darlan could have provided France with a nasty type of trial, but an assassin's hand in Africa intervened. Laval, too, could have been an upsetting foree —despite' his meanness and criminality—had General Franco permitted him to vrecede Petain into a Paris dock. But neither of these, nor anyone else, could 'have brought to his trial in France so many laurel leaves mixed with transgressions; no one in the world save Petain could have come so near to being a combination of King Lear and Charles I, and a challenge to both the sympathy and the execration of an emotional populace. No wonder that the Petain trial, striking France at a perilous cross-roads, introduces a new complexity. Little wonder if, as our correspondent writes, "the trial is a heavy, brooding moment for France, and thoroughly in keeping with the rather gloomy mood of the French people today and the sense of disillusionment which weighs heavily on the nation." He is not unjustified in comparing the hero of Verdun today with an Eisenhower or a Montgomery who should be charged in 25 years' time with "selling out" his country to the Japanese or to the Germans. As an anti-climax in propaganda the Petain trial possesses possibilities of damage not only for one set of interests but for all concerned; and'yet it has advanced slowly upon liberated France with all those evidences of political inevitability from which the French people have suffered in the past. A Nazi Government was adroit enough to use the shock of its scandals in its own favour; a French Government of liberation can only submit to the distressing effects of its own determined honesty, which at any rate stands out in marked contrast with the cynical defence of most of the confessed collaborationists —that they only sold honour to German thieves in the hope of buying it back. Politically, France was already condemned to constitutional doubts and delays, because Frenchmen still have to decide what form of government they desire (bi-cameral, uni-cameral, or what not) before they can elect, in the desired constitutional mould, their permanent, popularly-chosen Government. This delicate task made high demands on intelligence, time, and patience,, even had there been no emotional upset arising out of a great trial of a former hero. Our correspondent emphasises the trying effect of these political delays accompanied by dietary and social sufferings. While the French do not know their constitutional future, they are at any rate credited with knowing that de Gaulle is the only leader they at present want; and such acknowledged leadership would be still more valuable if de Gaulle's time was not so much applied to imposing foreign policy while the iron is hot. In Syria and in Lebanon the iron became too hot, yet most observers see little prospect of a diversion of de Gaulle's main energies from external to internal affairs. Writing two or three months ago in the "New York Nation," Cyril Connolly states that "the de Gaullist Government includes some very able people and shows every sign, of knowing how to increase its prestige and its hold. De Gaulle himself is regarded as being above politics: he is the symbol of the new France and is held ■ universally in the greatest respect. There is nothing to support liberal apprehensions that he seeks a military dictatorship or a coup d'etat; on the contrary he has shown genuine republican statesmanship. He is, however, obsessed with the question of French prestige and determined to obtain recognition for France as a great Power. He is more concerned with the occupation of Germany, the retention of Syria in the French empire, and the representation of France at the peace conference than with internal affairs. ... So far France has avoided a civil war (which no European country can afford) in spite of the crucial nature of its internal problems—food, fuel, transport, unemployment, returned prisoners, nationalisation [of industries]. There is every likelihood that France will continue to avoid a revolution and be steered by de Gaulle through a General Election." That hope will prosper the more if the' reverberations of collaboration trials—such as Petain's —and of foreign policy adventures do not aggravate a situation that, in the best. of circumstances, must continue for some time to be difficult and delicate.