Pigs & Thorns

A solution for the political and military vagaries in North Africa probably was in the making last week. It was needed.

Plot & Promise. General Henri Giraud last week dredged up a plot to usurp power and install the youthful Pretender, the Comte de Paris, as head of a North African kingdom. One guess was that the Comte would be shipped back to his pig farm in Tangier.

Rebuffs to both collaborationists and royalist plotters conceivably would pave the way for rapprochement between Giraud and the Fighting French of General

Charles de Gaulle. Last week two British spokesmen, Information Minister Brendan Bracken and North African Minister Harold Macmillan, put the British on record as supporting the political and military decisions of General Dwight Eisenhower. Thus they spiked, officially, reports that the British Government distrusted U.S. policies, and indirectly furthered moves to bring De Gaulle and Giraud together. But the efforts for De Gaulle-Giraud agreement picked up two thorns.

Friend & Foe. Bright as a dollar and full of information on underground resistance, French Communist Leader Fernand Grenier bobbed up in London. He table-thumped that all France is united behind De Gaulle as a symbol of liberation. Grenier "agreed that Giraud is the ideal man to lead the fighting forces for North Africa," but it was to De Gaulle that he brought a promise of support.

Marcel Peyrouton, onetime Resident General of Tunisia, who is thoroughly detested by De Gaullists, showed up in North Africa. He came at the invitation of Giraud with the consent of General Eisenhower. Vichy's ambassador to Argentina until he resigned when Pierre Laval seized power, Peyrouton apparently now was slated for an administrative post with Giraud.

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