The Politics of Victory

Conquering Allied troops heard that the Bey of Tunis, hawk-nosed, pouchy-eyed Sidi Mohammed Al Mounsaf, had fled to Europe with his Axis friends. But a British lieutenant found the sovereign in a bomb proof cave near his palace. Later, when a British major general called to pay his respects, the Bey had out his bodyguard, his band, and his 25 wives. The Bey himself, in grey suit and red tarboosh, complained that bombs broke the glass in his blue, bougainvillaea-covered palace near Tunis. The general apologized.

Before week's end, the Bey got fired. General Henri Giraud, Civil and Military Chief of French North Africa, ruled that Sidi Mounsaf had compromised Tunisia's "external and internal security" by truckling with the Axis. To the beylical throne, in accordance with dynastic tradition, went Sidi Mounsaf's oldest living male relative, unpolitical Sidi Al Amin.

For Safety. General Giraud was dealing with a delicate and potentially troublesome situation. Tunisia's 2,300,000 Moslem Arabs and Bedouins look with feudal reverence to the Bey as their spiritual and temporal lord. Of all French North African Moslems, the Tunisians are the most politically conscious, most resentful of their status as the political inferiors of Tunisia's 110,000 resident French, 95,000 Italians.

How the deposition of a Moslem ruler by a Christian power would impress the Tunisians and their fellow Moslems in Africa and the Near East remained a question. Axis propaganda had stimulated anti-Zionism throughout Islam, and had left Moslem nationalism aglow. General Giraud's firm stand last week was probably the wisest policy for the moment, but it did not allay the Moslem suspicion that the Allies have only one war aim--to chase out the Axis, insure a safe base for military operations and keep what they have won in battle.

For Prestige. One of Sidi Mounsaf's fellow puppets, bewhiskered, penny-pinching Admiral Jean Esteva, made good his escape from Tunisia. In Esteva's post as Tunisia's Resident General. General Giraud plunked his own man: tall, jolly General Alphonse Juin, French field commander in Tunisia, to administer the protectorate until the permanent Resident General, impetuous, gallant General Charles Mast, recovers from injuries received in a recent automobile accident.

Allied armies distributed the new French administration's posters and leaflets, smoothed the way for General Giraud's entry last week into Tunis, a predominantly de Gaullist populace generously cheered--and waved flags bearing General de Gaulle's Cross of Lorraine.

General Giraud had need to build up his popularity and prestige: a rendezvous with General de Gaulle was apparently in the offing. Between the two French leaders, after months of negotiation, still lay several differences. The most important question: whether a militarily dominated or a politically dominated provisional government should act for the French and their Empire before they choose their postwar government. General Giraud prefers a military regime. Allied victory in North Africa strengthened his position, but it also brought nearer the time when he and General de Gaulle must--or should--unite for the return to la patrie.

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