General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Fighting French, is a tall, stern man without the dramatic appeal of Joan of Arc but with all her love for France. Last week it was considered virtually certain that he was coming to Washington. Rebuffed and dismayed by the U.S.'s "temporary arrangement" with Admiral Jean Darlan in North Africa, De Gaulle had a case to plead.
To the Fighting French, Admiral Darlan is a onetime Nazi collaborationist, and therefore a traitor. Lieut. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's decision to recognize him (in order to put a quick end to French resistance in North Africa) is a blow to Fighting French prestige. They also deeply distrust the extent of Darlan's present collaboration with the Allies. But the Fighting French, as Frenchmen, retain their Cartesian logic.
No fair-weather friend of France is President Roosevelt, at the moment a court of high appeal among those seeking French leadership. From Roosevelt, De Gaulle will probably receive the details of the Darlan deal, with assurances that France will not be tossed away to quislings.
To De Gaulle the final smashing of Axis troops in North Africa would sound like the overture to victory. A policy of opportunism has contributed to that goal in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. With the French Fleet gone and with Dakar in the Allied sphere, the situation has changed, and with it has changed the position of Collaborationist Darlan. To the Fighting French and to many thoughtful U.S. citizens, a continued policy of opportunism has grave dangers. Two U.S. citizens spoke up last week to say so.
Before 17,000 Canadians who cheered themselves hoarse in Toronto, Wendell Willkie urged forthright discussion of war aims and policies.
"I was a soldier in the last war," said Willkie, "and after that war was over I saw our bright dreams disappear, our stirring slogans become the jests of the cynical, and all because the fighting peoples did not arrive at any common post-war purpose while they fought."
From Pundit Walter Lippmann came another warning of the need for political thinking to meet the problems of Europe. Lippmann recalled that for 20 years Europe has fermented with incipient class warfare. Said he: "We face the tremendous risk that liberation will be followed by civil war, unless we are prepared to choose correctly and swiftly, as territories are liberated, the authority which the great powers will back to restore order and to negotiate the peace. The price of not choosing swiftly, and of not choosing correctly, those who embody the vital purposes of the emancipated peoples, will be the anarchy of civil war."