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Brazil to Syria to Home. In 1919 General Gamelin headed the French military mission to Brazil, a job requiring the greatest tact since the old German pre-War influence in the Brazilian Army was still strong. In 1925 he was recalled and soon sent to Syria to help put down the Druse revolt, a suppression which he later succeeded in accomplishing alone with considerable bloodshed on the part of the Druses. He was on hand when French planes and artillery wiped out 1,456 civilians in the native quarters of Damascus, thus proving that Maurice Gamelin had no particular interest in inflicting minimum losses on his country's enemies. He was made commander of France's Army of the Levant, then brought home in 1928. Three years later he became Chief of Staff and in 1935 achieved what was then the biggest French military job, that of Vice President of the Supreme War Council (the President is the War Minister).
As France's No. 1 Soldier, Gamelin has continued the Maginot Line to the sea, mechanized the Army to a point below Germany's but at which he thinks it can be most effective, extended the conscript period from a year, to 18 months, to two years—this over the bitter opposition of most French politicians. He has confidence in the Army he has built. During the Munich crisis he believed the French Army was ready to fight, and General Gamelin quietly went to London to tell the statesmen so. He got about the same attention that he got in 1936 from short-lived Premier Sarraut when he told the Government he could chase the Germans out of the Rhineland if they wanted him to. The thoroughgoing General would not agree to shove off, however, without ordering a general mobilization and M. Sarraut feared it was too close to the general election to risk it. The history of Adolf Hitler's aggressions dates from there.
War plans are not war plans once they have been made public, and General Gamelin's are not exceptions. Nobody but the French high command knows what the French Army intends to do if & when it comes in conflict with the Axis. Best semiprofessional guess suggests it would try to knock the spots off Italy's northern industrial area by air, call up all its 5,000,000 reserves, sit tight behind its Maginot Line and see what happened. A hint in favor of the last course comes from a remark General Gamelin made when asked if the French had considered making an early drive on the German Limes: "What! I do not propose to start the war by a battle of Verdun!"
Benevolent Formality. Maurice Gamelin is generally characterized as colorless. That, however, is the way the French have learned to like their generals best. Napoleons I and III had plenty of color but they did not pay off at the finish. In 1889 colorful General Boulanger came close to seizing the country. The colorful military cliques of the century's turn—on one' side the Catholics and reactionaries; on the other the Radical Socialists and Freemasons—gave France its Dreyfus case. Nowadays no French soldier votes and on the subject of politics the Army is known as la grande muette (the big dumb woman). Particularly in these times, France wants her soldiers mute and professional, and the mutest and most professional is Maurice Gamelin.