Conversation Piece

The man behind the scenes in North Africa realized that the time had come to say something. "The events of the last week," said U.S. Minister Robert Murphy, "marked a definite departure from the Vichy form of Government." The definite departure amounted to a reorganization of General Henri Honore Giraud's administration, giving supreme power to the old soldier, but also opening a chink through which Fighting Frenchmen might some day enter.

Murphy said that the Allies were anxious to create a healthy political atmosphere in North Africa. But were not General Giraud's new powers just a trifle dictatorial? Well, said Murphy, backed up by his British colleague Harold Macmillan, they were not quite so dictatorial as they might seem. Possibly, Murphy said, General Giraud "might reinstitute the election of the Algerian Council" (a purely local affair). But that was about as far as the General would go.

British Minister Macmillan put in a word for U.S. expediency--a policy which the British hitherto had not warmly approved in North Africa. Political administration and policy had to be secondary to military need. Said Macmillan, explaining the continued dealings with Vichyites: "There is lots of difference between a traitor and one of the weaker brethren who chose the path of least resistance."

Justifying the recent appointment of Vichyite Marcel Peyrouton as Governor General of Algeria, Minister Murphy said: "Giraud wanted a man of proven ability as a colonial administrator, and General Eisenhower approved Peyrouton's appointment. The State Department and the [British] Foreign Office were consulted, but only in the matter of transporting Peyrouton from South America."

Pocket Play. New York Timesman Raymond Daniell last week described a scene at the Casablanca meeting between Generals Giraud and de Gaulle. Giraud had said that he had a plan for the union of all French forces in the administration of the French Empire. De Gaulle was interested, asked to see it. Giraud stuck his hand into his pocket. The plan was not there. He looked in other pockets. De Gaulle waited. Finally Robert Murphy spoke up. "Here it is," he said, reaching into one of his own pockets and handing the plan to Giraud.

That scheme came to nothing. (De Gaulle suspected that it involved the Comte de Paris, pretender to the French throne.)

General Georges Catroux, Fighting French commissioner in Syria, conferred with General Giraud last week. But the one really bright spot in this picture was the enthusiastic welcome accorded by General Giraud's Tunisian troops to General Jacques Leclerc's Fighting French forces.

Britain's Macmillan, despite his justifications of temporary expediency, neatly put the best of all arguments against appeasement when he said: "We must remember that this is the only part of France liberated for the moment and all the politics of France in the future will be conceived here."

What the world feared was an imminent miscarriage.

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