MARSHAL PETAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 March 1943, Page 4

MARSHAL PETAIN

FANCY FOR PLAYING SOVEREIGN LORD. AND CREATING LEGEND ROUND HIMSELF. In her remarkable book, “France in Torment,” Madame Gex Le Verifier :gives this portrait of Petain: “Petain had a fancy for playing the sovereign lord, and for creating a le:gend round himself about the good Marshal who perforce scolded, but comforted as well. To show the foreign embassies that he had nothing to Hear from his people, he went out alone every morning for a walk in the parks, patting the children’s cheeks as he went by. The head of the French State did not lack shrewdness. Despising his fellowmen, as, indeed, Laval'does also, he played oil his ministers against one another, in order to remain supreme ruler. When General de la Laurencie was sent away from Vichy and expelled from the National Council, the Marshal exclaimed: ‘No one ever consults me; however, I shall deal with this affair myself.’ A fortnight later he had done nothing, but pretended not to understand when the matter was referred to. “A Jewish deputation came to remind him that the sons of men who had fought in the war of 1914-18, and the fathers of young men who had been killed in the course of the present war, were kept out of most of the professions. He raised his eyebrows and declared with much feeling, ‘I hope I shall live long enough to cancel the decrees against the Jews.” “Ostensibly it was with a bad grace and under’ pressure from Abetz that, in February, 1941, he first took a declared stand against Gaullism, for, if his alleged understanding with General de Gaulle was a nuisance as regards his own relations with the Germans, the Marshal was well aware that this supposed understanding was one of.the reasons for his own popularity.”