Schizophrenic Headache

The Vichy Government, not knowing who will win the war, remains a split personality. Until something decisive happens, Vichy does well to keep its aching head.

Last week Pierre Laval, slickest collaborationist of them all, talked again with Marshal Henri Philippe Petain in Randan forest, where they met last fortnight (TIME, April 6). There were the same rumors that Laval brought Adolf Hitler's demands and threats, insisted that the Riom trials be stopped.* Diplomatic circles also heard that Laval appealed to Petain's friendship by telling him, truly or falsely, that an arch-collaborationist coup d'etat was being planned in Paris. Afterward Laval reminded the press that it was he who had instigated French collaboration with Germany and announced that his talks with Petain had ended. These remarks may have meant that Laval had been warded off by the old Marshal, who is still stalling for time and events.

The U.S. last week recognized the Free French administrative control of French Equatorial Africa and the Cameroons. This spoke louder than the recent recognition of the Free French in New Caledonia. The U.S. was obviously hearing the eloquence of General Charles de Gaulle. In London he sharply reminded the Allies that, while Hitler might not yet have the French Empire and Navy, Vichy's policy in neutralizing them had given Hitler a protective screen in northwest Africa and the Mediterranean. Continuing in a belligerent mood, General de Gaulle said: "Fighting France intends to go forward with her allies on the express condition that her allies go forward with her. . . . Who could . . . continue to keep French territories, French forces and French ideas in the battle, and even add to them, if the Allies themselves did not give them their wholehearted support? . . ."

Vichy heard this eloquence, too, and it increased Vichy's schizophrenic headache.

* They were--ostensibly for two weeks, perhaps for good & all.

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