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When Pierre Laval came back to power in Vichyfrance last week, the world felt in its bones that the war had taken some great new malevolent turn. Said Pundit Walter Lippmann: "Hitler has brought France back into the war." Cried a De Gaullist spokesman in London: "Think of that flabby hand, that evil lip, that shifty glance, that sneer of the executioner — and tell yourself that for 30 years France has not shed a tear without Laval gaining by it."
In Vichy a somber crowd of 2,000 waited for two hours for the return from Paris of Hitler's No. 1 French servant. Laval came heavily guarded in a fast, dark limousine followed by two police cars. He got out quickly, rushed up the steps and through the revolving doors of the Hotel du Pare. Not a sound came from the crowd. They were not there to pay tribute. They were there out of morbid curiosity. They, like millions of other Frenchmen, could guess what final cruelties and betrayals Laval would abet — if Adolf Hitler willed it. They knew Laval would stop at nothing to assure a German victory. Laval had said (in a letter quoted by the journalist Pertinax, who estimated that 90% of the French people are pro-British): "I fully realize that the hangman will quickly take care of me on the day British arms triumph. . . ."
Said Laval in his first broadcast as leader of France: "I have always affirmed that rapprochement of France and Germany is the condition for peace in Europe. Like an obsession, I have always sought on every occasion an entente which would put an end to tragic misunderstandings which too often in the past set two great peoples against one another."
Bad News for Everyone. Laval's return was bad news for the U.S., which promptly recalled its Ambassador from Vichy ''for consultations" and advised U.S. citizens to get out of Vichyfrance while the getting was good.
It was bad news for the United Nations' navies, for if the Axis gets the French, fleet it will, have, on paper, the balance of world sea power.
It was bad news for the British in the western Mediterranean, where havoc could be created by German bombers and submarines based on the French North African coast.
It was bad news for the British in the Middle East and the Free French in Syria, for Laval might order the Vichy fleet and land forces to reconquer Syria at the same time that Hitler started a drive through Syria toward the oil of Iran and Iraq and the Persian Gulf.
It was bad news for the sailors keeping open the United Nations' lifeline around Africa to the Red Sea and beleaguered India. Hitler might now take full control of Dakar as a base for cutting the lifeline in the South Atlantic, and the Japs (if Hitler didn't mind) might get Madagascar as a base for cutting the lifeline again in the Indian Ocean.
It was bad news for the U.S. bomber Ferrying Command, which is flying planes and supplies across Africa to the British in the Middle East and India (see map). A Vichy attack on Free French bases in French Equatorial Africa might threaten that supply line in a dozen places.
It was bad news for the people of France, where many a patriot and many a liberal is now in danger of the concentration-camp horrors which the Petain Government had so far spared them.