The Cloak of Guilt

Like ghosts in clanking chains, the tanks which France once had to hurl against the onrushing Germans began to haunt the men of Vichy. Old Papa Petain squirmed. Only 20 miles away, in the almost forgotten village of Riom, a story was unfolded that the world had never heard before. It was an appalling story. If true, it snatched the cloak of guilt from scapegoats facing trial in Riom's Palais de Justice, placed it snugly over the Marshal's own aged shoulders.

It was tough, stubborn Edouard Daladier, Premier when France went to war, who brought the rattle of tanks into the Riom courtroom. Accused with five others of responsibility for France's unpreparedness (TIME, March 2), Daladier would not be denied. France could have defended herself, said he. He had chapter & verse to prove it.

A Vichy news agency, just a week before had claimed that France had only 3,160 tanks to meet 7,000 to 8,000 German tanks. Daladier scoffed at this statement. France had 3,600 tanks and the Germans only 2,000. France's fault lay not in how few tanks she had, but in the way they had been used.

For years, Daladier said, the French High Command had distrusted tank warfare, had scorned the theory of General Charles de Gaulle that tanks should be used as the spearhead of attack, rather than as isolated units accompanying infantry advances. "But our leaders did not believe in them," Daladier told the court. "They were placed behind our troops, too far off to be of any use."

Then Daladier baldly said: "I am proud to have named [De Gaulle] a general."

The French people asked each other in whispers how he dared to say this of the man whom Vichy had condemned to death. Did it mean that the carefully chosen Riom tribunal would actually allow a trial in the finest French tradition? Or did it mean that Vichy had forgotten that such men as Daladier and Leon Blum were uncontrollable hornets when let loose?

The court seemed unsure of itself. It refused to let Daladier speak of French-Polish military agreements, and ruled that events long antedating the declaration of war were not subject to survey. But the men in Vichy had reason to crawl when Daladier read into the record that in 1934, Petain had refused to strengthen fortifications at Sedan (where German troops first broke through in May 1940), that it was Petain who in 1934 slashed a military appropriation from 600,000,000 to 400,000,000 francs, that the Supreme War Council had refused to consider new types of guns.

"Other mistakes were made," Daladier charged, "of which one day I will tell-even if it must be in a secret sitting."

With all the ghosts that were coming to life, a secret sitting might be the only way to prevent the Riom trial from turning into a trial by proxy of Petain and Vichy.

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