Conference of 1930 he fought for parity with the British, but they
refused it to him, with a prescience blessed by the event. Suppose
the French had possessed as powerful a navy as the British when the
French Army fell and Darlan had commanded a force able to challenge
the British! After the Battle of Oran, July 3, 1940 when the British,
rightly suspecting the intentions of Darlan, attempted to disable the
French Fleet at Mers-el Kebir in order to prevent its falling into the
hands of the Germans, Darlan led the outcry against the “perfidious”
assault. The British are convinced that if ever the chance comes Darlan
will use every means in his power to injure them. Whatever his motives
may have been at the beginning for joining the capitulation, Darlan
like most of the men of Vichy has by now so compromised himself with
the French people that, as one French friend of mine expressed it: “If
Germany is defeated the best these men of Vichy could hope for would
be dishonorable, furtive retirement, but I think most of them would be
killed.”
And if Germany wins? For a while Darlan and his colleagues seemed to
feel confident that Hitler would be good to them, but now he exclaims:
“If we do not get an honorable peace, if France is cut up into many
departments and deprived of important overseas territories, and enters
diminished and bruised into the New Europe, it will not recover and
our children will live in the misery and hatred which breed war.”
These words of the appeaser indicate that he has already discerned the
outlines of the fate Hitler has in store for France; yet what is the
alternative for him and those like him now? Free Frenchmen declare the
alternative is death, as traitors.
Q. _And Laval?_
A. He is wounded but he is surely enjoying himself because for the
moment he can say, “I told you so.” He is probably the world’s most
delighted observer of the Battle of Russia. My last glimpse of him
was in Bordeaux at the restaurant “Chapon Fin” the night France
capitulated. The restaurant was crowded with the wealthy, the powerful,
the noted and notorious of France. The door was locked; without an
introduction from at least a Cabinet Minister or a millionaire nobody
could get in. That night ten thousand refugees were pounding for
admission to the restaurants of Bordeaux. Our Ambassador to Poland,
Tony Biddle, unmarked from his harrowing escape across Poland under
Luftwaffe machine-gun fire, and as fresh here at the collapse of the
world as though he were attending a bridge party at home, rescued us
and with a gesture which implied we were all ambassadors, requisitioned
a table for our party of American newspapermen. From one corner Otto of
Habsburg greeted us in his cordial democratic way. He was one victim
Hitler would have liked to catch. I looked around the grotesque dining
room, decorated as an artificial rock garden of papier-mâché and now
populated by as queer a throng as ever assembled to dine at the funeral
of a nation. Nearly every French politician I had ever seen was there,
most of them drinking copiously of the wine for which the city was
famous. There was no gloom perceptible; not among the Frenchmen. The
atmosphere was excited, laughter was frequent and high-pitched. Perhaps
it was bravery; the gay talk and conviviality sounded very courageous
or else very frivolous at that moment. Who could have realized that
there were Frenchmen there calculating to improve their careers by the
fall of their country? We American newspapermen looked more depressed
than any of the men whose motherland was about to be strangled.
Presently a waiter brought me a note from Laval inviting me to his
table. I had not seen him enter. There he was, swarthy, ebony-haired,
with his famous white string tie, presiding over a company of half
a dozen friends, all talking, as everybody in the Western World was
talking, about the fate of France.
Abruptly Laval asked, “What do you think, M. Knickerbocker?”
I spoke with all the emphasis I could muster and placing my fist on
the table to help express my sincerity talked directly to him: “Mr.
President, I think that if you give up, if you surrender, it will
mean the end of France as a nation, the end of France forever unless
another, outside power comes to your rescue. But Mr. President, if you
go on fighting, if you refuse to surrender, even if you have to go to
North Africa and base your government on Morocco, then France will live
because she and her friends will win this war, however long it may
take. But please believe me, Mr. President, when I say I know what the
Nazis mean to do to France, and I know because I have lived for nine
years in Germany as a professional observer and I know Adolf Hitler,
and the Nazis, and the German people better than I know any politician,
or political party, or people in the world, and I know they mean the
utter destruction of France.”
There was dead silence, and to my gratification everybody at the
table, all of Laval’s friends, nodded in agreement with me, but M.
Laval himself, grave as a judge, leaned back and with that inscrutable
Moorish air of his said, “No, M. Knickerbocker, you do not understand.
Hitler does not want to destroy France; Hitler only wants to destroy
the Soviet Union.”
That was Laval’s belief, and because this belief was shared by so many
other Frenchmen, it became one of the principal reasons for the fall of
France.
Whatever else one may think of him, Laval has guts and is no hypocrite.
He hates democracy and says so. He is out to promote the fortunes of
M. Laval and admits it. He calls himself a realist; and realistically
he long ago estimated the strength of France as inadequate to stand
up against Germany. He learned to hate Britain during those long years
when every French move to bolster their position against the doubly
powerful Reich was checked by an imbecile British Foreign Office which
continued to think that the balance of power required a stronger
Germany and a weaker France. So Laval’s belief in the desirability of a
Franco-German “understanding” was not born of defeat alone.
He was the first French Premier to visit Germany after the war. I was
in Berlin when he arrived in the autumn of 1931 with the aging and
feeble but still brilliant Briand, then Foreign Minister. Bruening was
Chancellor and that farsighted benevolent statesman, whom the Allies
could have helped suppress the growing menace of Hitler, wished to make
the visit the foundation for a new era of Franco-German friendship. How
futile his hopes were came to light as the train bearing the French
ministers rolled in. I was standing with a small crowd of Germans at
the foot of the steps of the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof, and noticed
that the streets had been cleared and roped off all the way to the
Hotel Adlon. Masses of police manned the ropes but there was almost no
crowd to hold back. Around the station were about five hundred people.
I noticed they looked curiously alike, as though all from the same
neighborhood, the same class. Presently I saw a friend, a plain-clothes
man from Police Headquarters, all dressed up in his Sunday best, with
gloves and a derby hat and the inevitable big detective’s shoes. I
greeted him. He introduced his wife and children. A little surprised,
I asked if he were such a great advocate of Franco-German friendship
that he had brought his whole family to cheer the visitors from Paris.
“_Ja wohl!_” he replied. “Orders, you see. They sent us all down here.
Everybody here is from Police Headquarters, _mit Frau und Kinder_.
Nobody else; no outsiders. We get a day off for coming.” Sure enough,
that was the makeup of the entire crowd. They dutifully thronged around
the steps and shouted “_Hoch Frankreich!_” Laval and Briand then passed
through empty streets to the Hotel Adlon where another group of
policemen and their wives and children cried “_Hoch!_” again. And that
was the length and breadth and depth of Franco-German friendship.
Q. _Has Laval a chance to come back?_
A. Yes, if the Germans win he has the best of chances. Laval today is
the only master politician left in France; Pétain is senile; Darlan
is ward-heel size; none of the others in the Vichy camp is even that
large, and the politicians of the Republic are dead and buried. Laval
is the best-hated Frenchman alive; the shots fired into him by Colette
were cheered from one end of France to the other, but he is still the
only Frenchman capable of ruling France as a dictator.
He is much like Stalin, an Asiatic, with more than his share of the
Eastern blood of the Auvernacs. He has the psychology of the Oriental
and like Stalin he has the Oriental’s lack of human consideration. As
Stalin regards Russia without love, as an object, so Laval regards
France. He has few real friends but possesses a marvelous power of
extemporized comradeship and can talk the language of any man with whom
he converses, including, as one of his enemies suggested, “even an
honest man.” Once a friend of his exclaimed, “You ought to be dictator
of a South American Republic!” “How did you know?” asked Laval,
genuinely surprised. “Oh, just a joke,” answered the friend. “But no,”
said Laval, “I am amazed, because when I was a boy that was just what
I always dreamed of becoming--dictator of a South American state.”
Perhaps he may get his wish yet, as the malicious wits of the Riviera
have called Vichy France, “a banana republic without bananas.”
Laval’s hatred of England is extended now to America, because American
support upholds Britain, and Laval will never be safe until Britain
is defeated. He is still unwavering in his conviction that Germany
will win, but even if we entered the war and it became evident Germany
would lose, Laval cannot now change his position. He is one of those so
totally committed to the German cause that he stands or falls with it.
Q. _You have said that we Americans were very much like the French; now
in what way are we? Have we also traitors in our ranks?_
A. No, we have not, I am convinced, any traitors among our officers, as
the French had. There are many Nazi agents among us, and a few may have
penetrated to positions of some importance, but I do not believe they
could affect the issue of the war as they did in France. There are many
Communists as well among us, probably more than there are Nazis, and
we ought never to forget that whether they are native-born Americans
or not makes no difference. Nor does the fact that Soviet Russia is
momentarily engaged in fighting our enemy change the essential fact
that Communists cannot be loyal Americans. Their loyalty is to Moscow
alone, and if a change in Russia’s position should make it expedient
for the Kremlin to order American Communists to sabotage America’s war
effort, the order would be zealously obeyed.
Our chief danger of this sort lies in the wrongheaded activity of
our isolationists who, whether they wish it or not, serve the cause
of Hitler more effectively than all the paid agents of Germany and
Italy and Japan could do if their numbers were multiplied many times.
Consider carefully the account given you by my French friend of the
way the Germans appealed to Parisian conservative circles, and ask
yourself if their arguments do not sound remarkably like the speeches
of Lindbergh and Wheeler.
Treason can be difficult to define. I had a French friend, whom
I can call a friend no longer because he became one of the chief
collaborationists with the Germans. I think--I am not sure--but I
think we have no one like him in America, but he was so representative
of the group that betrayed France, that I want to quote a conversation
I had with him just before the war began. I said, “Jean, you seem to
believe profoundly that Germany is strong enough to win a war no matter
how France fights to prevent it; and you also seem to believe that the
German kind of National Socialism would be a good thing for the whole
continent, including France. Now what would you do, believing as you
do, if France were to be at war with Germany, and you thought defeat
was inevitable, and you foresaw a long and bloody conflict, and you
suddenly found yourself in possession of a military secret which would
end the war immediately in favor of Germany if the Germans knew it.
Would you give this decisive military secret to the Germans?” Jean
answered, “Yes, of course I would.” “But wouldn’t that be treason?” I
asked. “Not at all,” Jean answered. “It wouldn’t be treason to France;
it would only be a blow at what I consider the treasonable government
of the Republic.” Now I submit that even our rabid isolationists would
reject a position like Jean’s, but we ought nevertheless clearly to see
the fact that Lindbergh and Wheeler by their powerful discouragement of
the whole war effort of America are doing this country the same kind of
harm that came to France.
Q. _In what other ways do we compare with the French?_
A. It is astonishing to see how many points of similarity we can
discover, beginning with the well-known Maginot line complex which we
parallel with our Atlantic Ocean complex. I remember back in 1930 at
a cocktail party in Berlin a German Lieutenant Colonel remarked to me
about the Maginot line, which the French were just completing: “That
line of fortifications will be the death of France. If soldiers have
such an impregnable fortress to live in, they will never willingly
leave it to take the offensive, and without taking the offensive you
can’t win a war. The Maginot line will give the French Army a permanent
defense complex and out of its sense of security we will eventually
defeat it.” Our complacency behind the Atlantic Ocean, which we fondly
fancy could always protect us from attack, is precisely the same as
the French had. The French also were brought down by their skepticism;
they had ceased to have any faith in anything, whether the Republic, or
democracy, or God, just as millions of Americans lack faith in anything
and think it smart to deride any kind of ideals, particularly anything
so old-fashioned as sacrifice for one’s country.
The French had up to the bitter end, so little primitive, full-blooded
spirit that they neither sang on the way to battle nor cursed while in
action; they harbored no anger toward the enemy, no hatred for him, and
they had no will to kill. They were apologetic for being at war, until
catastrophe was upon them, and it was too late. Most Americans feel
apologetic about the war and behave as though they were not sure of the
rightness of our cause.
Another curious and not unimportant item of coincidence is that there
was a strong current of anti-British feeling in France at the beginning
of the war, just as there is here. In France it was grounded largely in
the argument, which had much truth in it, that Great Britain had been
largely responsible for the war by her shortsighted support of Germany
against France for so many years, and that the British would “fight
to the last Frenchman.” This latter argument seemed silly to me when
I first met it early in the Battle of France, at the front near Sedan
where I picked up a little printed leaflet in French, dropped by German
aviators.
It read:
“Where is Tommy? The units of the British army which had occupied
certain sectors of the Maginot line were immediately withdrawn after
the beginning of the German offensive. They were transported as
quickly as possible in the direction of the Channel. For political
reasons it was necessary to conceal this movement, so it was carried
out at night. Nevertheless the population of Lorraine could observe
easily enough that the English were retiring, and in various cities
and towns hostile demonstrations took place against them. Several
times the police and French troops had to intervene to calm the
crowds and suppress the demonstrations. _French Soldiers!_ You see
how the English are trying to get out just as they did in Norway.
_They are taking ‘English leave.’_ They are leaving you alone on the
battlefield. Are you stupid enough to die for those who are quitting
you to save their precious skins? You had better give the English the
answer they deserve for having betrayed you.”
Now there was not a word of truth in this propaganda about trouble
between British troops and French civilians, and I thought the leaflet
far too crude to have any effect, but I was mistaken; it corresponded
to the unreasoning feeling of many Frenchmen that the French Army
was bearing all the burden. They particularly resented the fact that
whereas at the beginning of the war the French mobilized all men from
twenty to forty-seven years old, the British at first mobilized only
those from twenty to twenty-five years old. The British Fleet, the
French knew theoretically, was just as important for beating Hitler as
the French Army, but the British Fleet was far away and its actions
were unobserved. Just so today in America we all know theoretically
that the presence of the British Fleet in the Atlantic is imperative
for our safety, but the British Fleet is far away, and so even when
we are sending supplies to the British Fleet and other arms standing
between us and our enemy, many Americans think of it as “aiding
Britain,” and feel quite unselfish about it.
A minor group in America also persists in blaming the British so
heavily for their now amply admitted and fully atoned faults of the
past, that some of them would almost rather see Munich revenged by
German troops in England than have America defend herself there.
Finally we have our anti-British Americans of Irish origin who
consider Oliver Cromwell more blameworthy than Hitler, although all
Irish-Americans are not so purblind by any means. Taking it all in
all, however, I should say that there is an even stronger anti-British
sentiment in America today than there was in France during the war, and
this when coupled to the broader anti-Europe feeling of a great many
Americans, increases the difficulty of our acting realistically against
a powerful enemy who is taking every advantage of these enfeebling
prejudices of ours.
Q. _You have named so many similarities between ourselves and the
French that it is discouraging indeed, but we have one undeniable
advantage of a large population, and we surely are not obsessed by our
birth rate._
A. It is true that we do not worry about our birth rate, although
perhaps we ought to, but we suffer just the same from something
very much like the French obsession with theirs. It was the French
preoccupation with their inferiority in numbers, and their falling
birth rate, which prevented them not merely from wasting lives, but
even from using them thriftily on the battlefield, and the result
was the debacle. During the Battle of France I seldom saw Colonel
Schieffer, in the French Ministry of Information, that he did not
exclaim, “We cannot bleed like this again. Twice in a generation is
too much. We have only twenty million Frenchmen. This time we must
make an end of the Boches so they can never empty our veins again.”
The Colonel, who was personally most warlike, was under the impression
we all had that the French Army was losing lives heavily, and he was
willing that it be done to prevent ever again such bloodshed in the
future, yet as a matter of fact, the impulse to save French lives had
already become so strong in the Army High Command that it governed all
great decisions and contributed seriously to the defeat.
Now despite the fact that we are a nation of 130,000,000 we are
obsessed to an equal degree with the fear of having to fight in large
numbers; we have what amounts to a phobia against sending an American
Expeditionary Force to Europe. We seem not to mind nearly so much the
idea of American boys in the Navy or the Air Force fighting and dying
abroad, but when it comes to the Army we recoil at the idea of an
A.E.F. Why the life of an infantryman should be more precious than that
of an aviator or sailor is not clear. The explanation of this attitude
must be found in the comparative numbers of men involved.
A.E.F. brings up the idea of millions of American boys laying down
their lives on the battlefield, and most Americans completely forget,
if they ever did know, that although we had 4,355,000 men mobilized
during the last war, the total number of them killed in action and died
of wounds received in action was 50,475. This is roughly one-half of
the number of persons killed by accident in the United States every
year. We nevertheless erected in every village and city of the land
large expensive monuments to our war dead, and the impression became
indelibly fixed in the American mind that we had lost millions, or
at any rate hundreds of thousands of dead. The vision of this mass
sacrifice of American youth is what moves the American people to reject
so violently the idea of an expeditionary force. We ought now to be
adult enough to see that our penurious attitude toward our precious
American blood reflects the same feeling as the French, with more
justification, had toward their birth rate, and that if persisted in,
this attitude will lead us to similar disaster.
Q. _Aren’t there any encouraging differences between ourselves and the
unfortunate French?_
A. I am glad to say there are, and enough, I devoutly hope, to save
us from their fate. We have a leader; the French had none. We are not
divided as badly as the French were divided. Despite the fierceness of
our political passions, it would be a very exceptional American indeed
who would say, “I’d rather have Hitler than Roosevelt,” as so many
Frenchmen used to say, “We’d rather have Hitler than Leon Blum.” We are
physically a healthier people than the French. There is hardly one of
the weaknesses now perceptible in the American people that would not be
swept away by the fact of our going to war, but there is hardly one of
them which can be removed by any other means.
The most encouraging difference between the French and American
democracies is the quality and character of our newspapers. American
newspapers bring to their readers today a greater volume of news,
of greater accuracy, than has ever been delivered to an audience of
newspaper readers in the history of the world. It has been my job for
nearly two decades to study the newspapers of a score of countries, not
superficially but with the businesslike object of gleaning news. I had
to read thirty-two German newspapers a day when I was correspondent
in Berlin; and a dozen or so daily in Paris. It is no exaggeration
to say that the reader of the _New York Times_, or the _New York
Herald-Tribune_, or the _Chicago Daily News_, or any one of half a
dozen of our great metropolitan dailies, has more detailed and true
information about what is going on in the world than if he were able
by magic to accumulate all the newspapers published everywhere else on
earth, and were able equally by magic to read them all in the original.
Often I am asked, “How can we know the truth? Everything is so
confusing. Aren’t we fed with propaganda?” The answer is you can know
the truth by reading your newspapers thoroughly and exercising common
sense in balancing the reports from the belligerent countries against
each other.
No war has ever been fought in such a blazing light of information.
Never has such a quantity of news been put before a people as we
Americans have before us at breakfast every day and from then on until
midnight. American newspapers are doing today the most superb job ever
done by daily journals. But that is not their chief merit. Their chief
merit is their honesty and incorruptibility and their sincere endeavor
to be fair and objective. These qualities have enabled the American
press, since the foundation of the United States, to be the equal in
importance to the executive or the legislative or the judicial branch
of government. It is the vigilant watchman over the functioning of the
other three branches of government.