Secrets Will Out

Cordell Hull wore the happy look of a man who at last can tell a burning secret: for 25 months he had shaped his every act toward Vichyfrance so as to prepare for a successful Mediterranean front.

Keeping his mouth shut was hard. People called him appeaser, demanded his resignation. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had approved his policy, but silently had to let stout-hearted Cordell Hull struggle alone with the misunderstandings.

Now, to tell all, the Secretary of State called newspapermen for an unusual Sunday conference in an unusual place, his own office. Soberly, but radiating satisfaction, he read:

"People who have been concerned about the Vichy policy of this Government will now be able to see fully and clearly its entire content. The liberation of French Morocco by American military forces carries forward the various purposes and objectives of this Government. . . ."

Now the country knew that its State Department had strung along with Vichy: 1) to get information about Axis activities; 2) to encourage French opposition to Hitler; 3) to encourage the hope of freedom among the French; 4) to minimize French collaboration with Germany; 5) to prepare for war in the Mediterranean area. To do this the U.S. had allowed food, clothing and oil to go to Africa.

His secret told, Cordell Hull cared little about Vichyfrance reaction, remained stonily indifferent when the Laval Government told tall, dapper S. Pinkney Tuck, to whom the development was no surprise, that it was breaking relations with the U.S.

But another action Vichy neglected: it said nothing to its own Ambassador in Washington, blue-eyed, balding little Gaston Henry-Haye. The State Department waited for M. Henry-Haye to come after his passport, finally dispatched George T. Summerlin, Chief of the Division of Protocol, to the handsome, police-guarded French Embassy. For him to give the documents to the anxious, worried envoy took only a moment.

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