Four Missions

Algiers has been the focus of renascent France ever since General Charles de Gaulle arrived last May to shake the hand of General Henri Honore Giraud. Last week the affairs of France were in an uneasy state of suspension, and they were no longer focused at Algiers.

A Military Mission. To the U.S. went General Giraud on a mission that Washington called "Military." With his American hosts the French leader will talk over details of equipping the French Army of liberation now forming in North Africa. But General Giraud's trip to America had inevitable political effects. Followers of De Gaulle saw it as a slight to their leader, another mark of official U.S. antipathy to Gaullism, another tactless act that would alienate the French people from the U.S.

A report had General Giraud stopping in Martinique before his arrival in America. The pro-Vichy master of the French Caribbean island, cagey, white-goateed Admiral Georges Robert, had asked the U.S. "to fix the terms" for a change in the island's authority. To Martinique for negotiations hurried U.S. Vice Admiral John H. Hoover, commander of the Caribbean Sea Frontier. After three years of jealous, stubborn defiance, cantankerous Robert seemed ready to turn over his tiny domain, with its gold, its barnacled ships and its rebellious, starving inhabitants, to the rule of the Committee of Liberation in North Africa.

A Secret Mission. To Syria went General Georges Catroux, the patient go-between of French unity, in his capacity as Coordinator of Moslem Affairs. The purpose of his mission in the Levant was shrouded in secrecy. It might be concerned with French sovereignty in the territory now run by the British military as an invasion base. It might also be concerned with the problem of a restive Moslem populace.

A Cleanup Mission. To French West Africa would go Pierre Charles Cournarie, named Governor General to succeed ex-Vichyite Pierre Boisson, who had been stanchly supported by the U.S. It was an important appointment, one which Gaullists could hail as a signal victory. As the Gaullist Commissioner of the Cameroons, able, youthful (48) Pierre Cournarie had done a model job. In West Africa, recruiting ground of the famed Senegalese troops, he could do much to clean up Vichy's traces.

A Frustrated Mission. In Algiers General de Gaulle contemplated the news from London: Prime Minister Winston Churchill's statement that Allied intervention on behalf of General Giraud "was made on military grounds,'' implied no Anglo-American control over "the political organization." He also contemplated the fact that he was not Commander-in-Chief during General Giraud's absence. That job had been assigned to General Giraud's Army Chief of Staff, dapper General Alphonse Juin.

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