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"He Betrayed France." Later the parade of prosecution witnesses began. Day after day, past the prisoner's dock marched men who had led France in the prewar years of disunion and gathering defeat. They talked torrentially, plaintively, querulously. They pleaded, argued, wept, declaimed. They defended themselves, often by accusing each other. They were France, baring her shame.
Cried dapper ex-Premier Paul Reynaud, 66, who had been Pétain's predecessor: "I, like the rest of France, was fooled by the Marshal. ... He tried to destroy what remained of France's soul. . . ."
Cried bull-like ex-Premier Edouard Daladier, 61, who signed the Munich pact: "Pétain betrayed his duties and the charges of his office. . . ." (The sweating jurors sent for cooling drinks. Attendants brought them Vichy water.)
Sobbed Albert Lebrun, 74, last President of the Third Republic: "I cannot understand how [Pétain] allowed himself ... to do such blameworthy things. . . . A warrior of France . . . risen so high to have fallen so low!" (A juryman demanded that the Marshal answer a question—"His honor is at stake!" Quavered the prisoner: "I heard nothing. I don't even know what's going on." Snapped Judge Mongibeaux: "I know perfectly well he hears.")
Said courtly Jules Jeanneney, 81, last President of the French Senate: "The Marshal failed us. ... The armistice was an irreparable error. . . . But let us admit we had no other choice." (Suddenly the Marshal heard quite well, bowed warmly to the witness.)
Mumbled Léon Blum, 73, Socialist Premier of France's Popular Front Government (1936-37): "The Marshal . . . used his personality . . . and his prestige to lead France into shame. ... I call that treason." (Twice Léon Blum broke down and cried. The Marshal, who once tried Blum for war guilt at Riom, eyed him without visible emotion.)
"He Represented France." At week's end the prosecution had almost finished its case. This week, counsel for the defense will summon its witnesses. Few doubted that the case against the Marshal, the national need to repudiate a national humiliation, would end in the old man's condemnation. But for most Frenchmen the trial was embarrassing. Wrote Academician François Mauriac, a leader of the leftist Front National, in Figaro:
"We do not seek to excuse the old Marshal but let us have the courage to say that he did not inaugurate a policy but rather that he was the culmination of a policy. ... If we deserved to have Pétain, we deserved also, thank God, to have De Gaulle. The spirit of abandonment and the spirit of resistance—both are incarnated in Frenchmen, and these two spirits met in a duel of death. . . . Since the most modest among us shared the glory of the first resister, let us not shrink from the thought that a part of ourselves was an accomplice of that crushed old man."