Grande Arm

General Charles de Gaulle stirred Frenchmen last week with the Napoleonic echo of two words -- grande armee. He announced that the U.S. and Britain will supply weapons for a new army which will again make France a military power.

Said the General : "We have begun to rebuild a great army [line grande armee]. . . . Allied cooperation is assured us for arming . . . new units. . . . Until the total defeat of the enemy and the permanent establishment of French security on the Rhine, no day will pass without our sword growing heavier."

How big would the grande armee be? War Minister Andre Diethelm spoke of 650,000 men. They will include some 70,000 troops trained in North Africa and one F.F.I, division now fighting in Alsace, most of the remaining 300,000 men of the F.F.I., recruits from an estimated 200,000 21-year-olds to be conscripted this month.

Two days after his announcement, General de Gaulle and Chief of Staff General Alphonse Juin left Paris for Allied High Command headquarters on the western front. There they talked strategy with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, other bigwigs. General de Gaulle was clinching his argument that, without France, "nothing can be decided, neither victory, world organization, nor peace."

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