IKE FRENCH COLLAPSE

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21230, 28 September 1940, Page 11

IKE FRENCH COLLAPSE

Where Guidance Failed :: Defeatism in Cabinet

(Paris Correspondent of London Times.)

"WHAT HAS happended to this country?” someone asked on board the tender which was to take us out from Bordeaux. The same question must haunt the minds of all who have known and loved France with her great qualities of courage, intelligence, and patriotism. No outsider has the right to recrimination against France in her hour of agony, following a titanic struggle against overwhelming masses of men and material. Before setting forth the melancholy tale of shortcomings in both the civil and military spheres it is the duty of any fair-minded observer to pay a heartfelt but wholly inadequate tribute to the people, the real people of France. The men were ready to fight, the people to suffer and endure. But the Supreme Leadership Was Lacking. The collapse came from the top. Lack of foresight, fear of responsibility, divided counsel, outmoded military thinking, and, in some cases, a total'inability to understand what Nazi Germany stands for and intends—all played their part in bringing France to her knees. Week after week moral failure led to material failure; material failure reacted upon moral resistance; until at last the vicious circle of defeat was complete. When the war began France was still in the throes of internal political dissension and not altogether united on the question of fighting. It was, in fact, evidence that a section of French opinion was against the war and inclined to blame England for involving her in support of Poland. The eight months of bloodless war, that “ drole de guerre,” as the soldiers called it, left the troops grumbling at their inactivity, the generals comfortably convinced that their strategy—which had ignored the lesson of Poland—was fool-proof, and the politicians happily pursuing their usual games. M. Daladier, so long described as a strong man. was obliged to take M. Raynaud into his Cabinet as Minister of Finance—for the little Deputy for Paris had shown too much vision and courage to be ignored. The two men were never at ease with one another, and, when M. Reynaud's straight programme of work and sacrifice produced some inevitable grumbling from the selfish and faint-hearted, M. Daladier began preparing the ground for his removal. A few days later the Norwegian storm broke. M. Reynaud was Uneasily in the Saddle, tc be saved for the moment by the German onslaught of May 10. On that day the writer called on M. Reynaud and received yet further proof of a clear-mindedness which, had it been joined to the ferocity of soul of a Clemenceau, would almost certainly have made him the saviour of his country. I found him greatly disturbed, and asked what was the matter. He told me that three or four days before he had, with expert assistance, gone into the conduct of the French operations, in Norway and had discovered enough to convince him that he could no longer retain General Gamelin as Generalissimo. He had summoned M. Daladier, gone over the evidence with him, and announced his decision, whereupon M. Daladier utterly refused to agree to the change, saying that he would resign and provoke a political crisis. The matter had been placed before a Cabinet meeting the day before (May 9), and after a hot argument Ministers remained undecided. M. Rey-

naud was thinking of resignation, but a few hours later came the German general offensive. The President of the Republic called him to remain at his post and enlarge his Cabinet, which he did by the inclusion of MM. Marin and Ybamegaray. But M. Daladier was still raising difficulties about the removal of Gamelin. Finally M. Reynaud decided that it would perhaps cause more harm than good to make such a change at such a critical hour. The break-through on the Meuse, revealing the inadequacy of the French military preparations, was Gamelin’s Death-warrant. M. Reynaud called in General Weygand and entrusted him with the well-nigh impossible task of stopping the rot at once. That was fair enough. But he also called in the 84-year Marshal Petain, and a fresh and most grievous joint in the French armour lay open. Marshal Petain had rightly won a great reputation in the last war. But that was over 20 years ago. Now he was old and tired, yet stubborn, none too friendly to the British, and, above all, steeped in a military tradition of the past. He had been launched as a figurehead to breast the seas of successful resistance; he remained to command a wrecked hull on the bitter waters of defeat. Nevertheless, for a time things seemed to go better; the Weygand system of defence in depth slowed the enemy advance and exacted a heavy toll. Gradually, however, the weight of numbers and material, above all material, began to tell. Tanks, artillery, machine-guns cannot be handed over in the middle of a hot engagement. The result was that the same men day after day had to fight on, a sleepless, nerveracked, an ever-dwindling but glorious band, while fresh troops by the hundred thousand were held idle behind the lines. Meanwhile, on the home front an atmosphere of fear, confusion, and defeatism began to close in. It started first where it should have come last, among certain members of the Cabinet, officials, and many who by birth of circumstance owed it to their country to set an example. And while the political defeatists whispered away each other’s moral, the people were kept in comfortable ignorance of events, so that the final news of an impending capitulation gave them no time for reaction other than stupefied grief. In the Cabinet itself M. Reynaud and that great-hearted fighter, M. Georges Mandel, the Minister of the Interior, were putting up a struggle for continued resistance, but M. Reynaud had unwittingly Loaded the Dice Against Himself. And the new Petain Cabinet seemed to neglect no chance of cutting its own throat and that of the country with it. Petain, self-deluded into the belief that a nicehonourable peace could be made between soldiers, overlooked Hitler’s declared aim of annihilating France. He and his advisers kept up their pitiful belief that France herself would be allowed an independent existence. They know better now—too late. Even such a tragedy cannot obscure the great qualities of the French people as a whole, though they themselves admit that in part they are paying for years of laxity and indifference to the manner of their governing. Many civilians were brave beyond the asking.