Toward Twilight

A motorcade of eight cars crossed the Swiss frontier from the collapsing Third Reich. A very old Frenchman, wearing a black coat and a grey fedora, was the chief passenger. Beside him sat his worried wife. "Don't overdo it, Philippe!" she said. "Don't overdo it!" When a Swiss officer shook his bony hand, the old man's eyes watered. When Swiss girls gave him flowers and candy, his eyes watered again. His wife fretted: "Don't overdo it, Philippe!"

Henri Philippe Petain, Hero of Verdun, Marshal of France and Chief of State of Vichyfrance, was home again. It was his 89th birthday. With German permission, through the Swiss Government, the Marshal had offered to surrender himself to the French Government of General Charles de Gaulle and to stand trial for high treason. The offer had been accepted.

At the French frontier Lieut. General Joseph Pierre Koenig, hero of Bir Hacheim, Commander of the F.F.I, and Military Governor of Paris, waited in stony silence to put the old man under arrest. A Swiss Guard of Honor presented arms. But French troops presented reversed arms (rifle butts upward), a gesture of dishonor. The old Marshal doffed his hat, offered to shake hands with General Koenig. The General stiffly declined. Quietly, in the twilight, Henri Petain boarded a special train for Paris.

Next morning the Marshal and his wife were installed in a plainly furnished room of old Fortress Montrouge on the capital's outskirts. Below a barred window was the execution ground for those condemned by the Paris purge court. The Marshal glanced at the two beds, the two leather chairs, the table. Then he asked dumbfounded guards for a picture of General de Gaulle to hang on the bare wall.

Germany's V5. Politically, Petain's return was embarrassing, confusing, frightening. General de Gaulle said nothing. State Prosecutor Andre Mornet, fiery scourge of World War I's spies and traitors, who had come out of retirement to prosecute the men of Vichy, hastily postponed plans for a trial of Petain in absentia, prepared a new trial for June or later. Cried the leftist press: "Petain is Germany's V5. . . . Germany wants to use him to sow disorder in France!"

Four other leaders of the old France were also returning from Germany. Ex-Premiers Paul Reynaud (Petain's predecessor), Edouard Daladier (of Munich fame) and Leon Blum (of the Popular Front), were presumably coming home via Switzerland. Ex-Premier Edouard Herriot (leader of the Radical Socialists) was stopping first in Moscow. These men, plus the 2,500,000 plain French prisoners and deportees pouring back home, were the potent imponderables of France's political future.

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