Base on Balls

Franklin Roosevelt, who dearly loves a baseball metaphor, came up with one of his choicest. In Martinique, pro-Vichy Admiral Georges Robert had given way to anti-Vichy Henri-Etienne Hoppenot. Said the President: We waited it out and we got a base on balls.

But many a pop bottle was still coming Pitcher Roosevelt's way as a result of the Administration refusal to recognize the French Committee of Liberation in Algiers. In a Bastille Day message, the President emphatically, if indirectly, repeated his stand--there is, at the present time, no France. He based this argument against recognition of the French Government on the fact that 95% of the French people are under the German heel, only 5% free. But many an observer at once pointed out that the U.S. recognizes eight other European Governments in exile, whose people are at least 95% under the German heel (Luxembourg, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, The Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Greece and Yugoslavia).

Then, at his press conference, the President went on the defensive: the Administration was the victim of vicious propaganda. It sided neither with Giraud nor De Gaulle, it was not trying to interfere in internal French affairs. And there the contest settled into the early-inning doldrums, with no one quite sure what Pitcher Roosevelt had up his sleeve.

The President also:

> Joined with Prime Minister Churchill in delivering a quit-or-die ultimatum to the Italians.

> Served notice on John L. Lewis that he intends to return the coal mines to their owners as soon as normal production is restored, despite the union leader's threat that such action means another strike.

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