Entente Cordiale?

Never had General Charles de Gaulle's nine-month-old, knocked-about Algiers regime seemed so near to recognition as the interim government of all France.

"For Our Future." The U.S. moved toward broadened recognition (see p. 77). Britain accomplished it. Stiff, stern Sir John Anderson, Chancellor of Britain's Exchequer, beamingly announced to the House of Commons "a happy augury . . . for our future . . . relationship with France." Whitehall and the Algiers Liberation [Administrative] Committee had initialed: 1) a financial agreement, pegging the rate of exchange, for the duration, at 200 francs to the pound; 2) a mutual-aid agreement, pledging "all the military assistance that each is able to supply for joint prosecution of the war."

The accord's importance lay in its implication: Britain admitted the right of the De Gaulle regime to act with authority not only for the French Empire but for the homeland. Military necessity made the admission inevitable. As leader of the second-greatest colonial empire, holder of vital bases, wielder of an army of 400,000 and link to Europe's biggest resistance group, the Algiers government had to play a key part in the coming Allied invasion. Plans were well advanced. The Committee would send an army into France, pay for relief supplies, devise a currency, probably administer liberated territory until elections can be held.

Some thought that there might be another spur to London's rapprochement with Algiers: a traditional, power-political desire to prepare a counterbloc in western Europe, just in case Russia establishes a rival block in the east (see p. 11). London dispatches reported that Britain and the U.S. will soon sign agreements providing for administration of liberated Norwegian, Netherlands and Belgian territories by their Governments in Exile.

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