FRANCE: Schizophrenic Headache

The Vichy Government, not knowing who will win the war, remains a split personality. Until something decisive happens, Vichy does well to keep its aching head.

Last week Pierre Laval, slickest collaborationist of them all, talked again with Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain in Randan forest, where they met last fortnight (TIME, April 6). There were the same rumors that Laval brought Adolf Hitler's demands and threats, insisted that the Riom trials be stopped.* Diplomatic circles also heard that Laval appealed to Pétain's friendship by telling him, truly or falsely, that an arch-collaborationist coup d'état was being planned in Paris. Afterward Laval...

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