Critique

To the Hotel de Ville in Algiers, overlooking the palm-skirted harbor, stalked General Charles de Gaulle last week to address the maiden session of the new French Consultative Assembly. Through cheering crowds De Gaulle passed into the high-ceilinged chamber. He mounted the rostrum, faced a room filled with Liberation Committee members, Allied diplomatic observers, and Assembly delegates, many of whom had come directly from Occupied France. Looking down, De Gaulle saw General Henri Honore Giraud. And perhaps in his mind's eye he could see France too--Strasbourg, Metz, Lyon, Marseilles, Paris. Said he, grimly and pointedly:

"France . . . has the deep feeling that a failure to recognize her rights or dignity would be first, an injustice, and second and especially, a mistake. . . . France thinks that any European settlement and any major world settlement made without her would not be a good settlement. . . . That is why the Committee of National Liberation now claims the right to present with the great nations the solutions which France judges necessary to the settlement of this war and the organization of the world to come. In this matter, the support and aid given to the Committee by the Consultative Assembly will be the voice of a nation rising from its dungeon!"

The 42 delegates then present rose to their feet applauding. Giraud stepped forward to shake De Gaulle's hand.

Rebuke. If there were any doubt that De Gaulle referred to the feeling among Frenchmen that France was ignored at the Moscow Conference, it melted away two days later when the Committee declared: "[We] attach too high a price to inter-Allied solidarity not to be pleased. . . . However it appears to the Committee that settlement of the fate of Germany and her allies after their defeat cannot be undertaken or successfully conducted without the participation of France. The

Committee must therefore make known that any decision that could have been taken on this subject would bind France only if she had participated."

At week's end no official reply from Britain, the U.S. or Russia was disclosed. But France may have access to the tri-power European Advisory Commission to be set up in London. By agreement before and at Moscow, the Liberation Committee is to participate in the lesser Mediterranean Commission and in the settlement of Italian affairs. General de Gaulle has spoken overhastily in the past; he may have done so once again.

Anger & Pride. Patriotic Frenchmen, friendly to the U.S. and Britain, were suddenly noting the decline, both in French Africa and in Metropolitan France, of British-American prestige. Resentment toward the U.S., originally born of failure to deal harshly with Vichyites in North Africa, was growing. Gaullism was a spreading fire.

Frayed tempers betrayed the Algiers French into emotional overemphasis. The very fact that U.S. and British troops had driven out the Germans, and would eventually free France, bruised French pride. Irritated by what they have for a year called "American interference" in French North African politics, they evidenced growing distaste for U.S. troops. Typical of their unreasonable, but understandable, complaints: Yanks drive their jeeps too fast, talk too loudly in bars.

Beneath such pinpricks lay serious grievance. Said a French underground Assembly delegate: "I have heard a member of the American Diplomatic Corps here say that we French are now only little boys. That is a view we cannot accept. To Frenchmen, you Americans are still the Americans of 1918. But Americans no longer regard us as the victorious Frenchmen of 1918. Yet we are the same France today. If this paradox is recognized, we can resume the friendly relationship to which we aspire. Today Frenchmen are suffering--and so we are very sensitive." A French resistance leader, recently arrived in London, said: "Some of us could not understand the Allies' policy in North Africa. To us who have worked so long and so hard for our freedom, it is unthinkable that old and dear friends should try to dictate [to us] how we shall use that freedom when it has been won." .

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.