TRAGIC TRIO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 September 1941, Page 6

TRAGIC TRIO

PETAIN, DARLAN AND LAVAL. COLLABORATION WITH GERMANY. Petain, firm believer long before the last war that France could not resist indefinitely with its 40 million population the 80 million German population bearing on its frontier; Darlan the ambitious; and Laval, the sinister real dictator. The tragic trio formed the main part of a recent lecture given by M. ■Maurice Dejean, diplomatic adviser to General de Gaulle, before the members of the British Association for International Collaboration.

A spectator of the last days of the French government of M. Paul Reynaud, M. Dejean met the three almost hourly in the tragic end at Bordeaux. Marshal Petain Was a “defeatist by conviction,” Who never thought that France would emerge victorious from the last war, he said. Darlan was always a man of unbounded ambition, intoxicated with the sudden opportunity afforded by the collapse to mount rapidly to a place of eminence. Laval he painted in sombre colours, sinister, un-French, dangerous behind the scenes.

The “liquidation” of Laval had more in it than met the eye, said the lecturer, and the apparent opposition of Darlan and Laval is a clever deceit. The stage is all set for Darlan’s taking oVcr the succession from Petain as head of the State, and Laval’s governing the country in the closest colaboration with Germany. Under the fiction of collaboration the country would be part of Germany in all but name. Marshal Petain has, however, in the last few weeks lost much of his prestige as “I’honnete homme,” for occupied France, representing two-thirds of the territory and three-quarters of the population, understands full well what underlies Syria. M. Dejean cited two facts worthy of note: At Neyrac, the town in which Petain’s collaborator Darlan was born, the walls on the day the Admiral visited it Were covered with “Down with Darlan.” At Bordeaux, 12,000 school children parading before the new Secretary of State for Youth (servile copy of the Nazi organisation) Were called upon ot shout “Vive la France. Vive Petain,” but they only shouted “Vive la France.” “There is a state of mind among the French population that is certainly hot bf a nature to facilitate any German attempt at the invasion of Great Britain,” said M. Dejean. What Petain has lost, de Gaulle has gained.