ADMIRAL DARLAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 May 1941, Page 6

ADMIRAL DARLAN

TWICE AS DANGEROUS AS LAVAL ACCORDING TO FRENCH CIRCLES IN LONDON. AMBITION PLAYED UPON BY GERMANS. “Twice as dangerous as Laval" is the description of Admiral Darlan b.y authoritative French circles in London. The reasons given arc that, in the first place, the Admiral is no friend of Great Britain, and he is a man of unbounded ambition destined to step into the shoes of Marshal Petain and find himself head of a great nation. His ambition, say those recently returned from France, has been skilfully played upon by' the German masters of France. He has been led on by them to envisage a great career in the “New Order” in the new Nazi Europe, which, when it suits their purpose, the Nazis present as a united entity in which France will “find her

real place," and a “great French admiral" may win a great naval victory over Britain, such a victory as only

the French Fleet, whisper the Nazis, could hope to achieve. Lest the picture be thought exaggerated, it is well to ponder the words of an article published in a recent issue of probably the most important of French periodicals. “L'lllustration.” This particular issue carries a portrait of the Admiral on the cover, in uniform, and another of him on the principal inside page, in civilian dress. The leader writer, M. Jacques de Lesdain, has called his article, "The Principal and the Accessory.” "The principal thing today," says M. de Lesdain, "is the downfall of the power of the English and the entry of France into the European fatherland (patrie europeenne.") We know where wo English stand and we need) not follow the article into its sterile i

“accessories.” the chief of which is that no one apparently should mind much, about liberty and such unconsidered trifles, which can bo safply left to a "generous" foe who, after killing some 80,000 Frenchmen and now holding three and a half million other Frenchmen as prisoners of war,” is going to make such a nice Europe for us all to live in.

While Admiral Darlan may bo thinking of himself as a possible hero of a naval engagement that would reverse the misfortune that befel Napoleon's Admiral. Villeneuve, at Trafalgar, it must not bo forgotten that "there are others." It is not sufficiently known that the "Richelieu" at Dakar received an order from Admiral Darlan to re- | turn to Brest, when the sailors, fearing their ship was to bo turned over to the Germans, refused to obey. An attempt made to replace them by the ‘crews of three destroyers failed completely. The mass of French sailors, like the mass of the French people, know that there is only one hope for their country. and that hope is in a British victory.