The Good Soldier

As dusk fell in Vichy a solitary figure could be seen walking along the banks of the Allier River evidently in deep thought, hands behind his back. But few recognized General Maxime Weygand, who tonight is still Delegate-General of the Government for French Africa with full powers to act on his own initiative in cases of emergency. Those who did bared their heads, sensing that the slight man, still athletic despite his 74 years, was engaging in a deep moral struggle.

Some recalled that at the end of May last year they had bared their heads when that same figure emerged from the Ministry of War in Paris, summoned post-haste from the Near East to take command of the French armies in a forlorn hope.

Late tonight it seems likely that General Weygand will not return to his headquarters in Algiers. . . .

Though New York Times Correspondent G. H. Archambault did not know it when he wrote this understanding dispatch, General Weygand had already made his decision. For 14 months he had held for France a North Africa vital to Adolf Hitler's war plans and New Order in Europe. Time after time he had said he would fight anybody who tried to take French North Africa. Time after time Adolf Hitler had tried to have him removed. But on this point old Marshal Henri Philippe Petain had been firm--until the pressure became too great. Now General Weygand had been told that collaboration with Hitler would entail concessions in North Africa. Only one decision was possible for such a man as Maxime Weygand. Correspondent Archambault told what sort of man this was:

General Weygand's retirement would add one more chapter to a life story that in the last 20 years has consisted mostly of recalls from retirement during crises--the defense of Warsaw against the Bolsheviki in 1020, when women kissed the hem of his garment and men hailed him as a savior; Chief of the French General Staff when the full implication of a reduction of the length of compulsory military service had become clear; and finally to take chief command when the Germans had won the Battle of Flanders and were waging the Battle of France. "See Weygand," was Marshal Foch's reply to intruders and bores, and General Weygand, his Chief of Staff, was ever equal to the occasion. It is a matter of record that General Weygand was prepared to sacrifice promotion and all else in his loyalty to Marshal Foch. . . .

Maxime Weygand had pledged his word to one policy, and sealed it by accepting U.S. aid. He had pledged his loyalty to a chief who had now chosen another policy. General Weygand was, above all, a soldier whose first loyalty was to his chief--whether that chief was the indomitable Foch or the plastic Petain. Maxime Weygand resigned.

Thus ended the last hope that the France of Henri Philippe Petain and Jean Franc,ois Darlan might be saved from Hitler's Europe. Scarcely had the Allier flowed another league than half a dozen collaborationist officials were on their way to North Africa to undo the work that Maxime Weygand had done. Marshal Petain and Admiral Darlan packed to go to Paris--the Marshal for the first time since the armistice--to meet "a high German personage" and sign away the rest of their country's freedom of action. In Berlin seven little Axis satellites (Finland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, Rumania and Nanking) added their signatures to the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936, which was just a preliminary to the great European pact that Hitler was readying for Marshal Petain's signature.

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