End of an Entente

The Battle of Oran last week terminated an era in Anglo-French relations: that of the Entente Cordiale. The Entente, born in 1904 and practically the only political monument to fun-loving, Francophile Edward VII, was only a general understanding primarily concerning African colonial matters. By 1907 it had blossomed into the Triple Entente of Great Britain, France and Russia, and bore its outstanding fruit in lining up the Allies against the central continental power of Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I. In the 20 years after 1919 the Entente was frequently strained: when Britain refused to consider Germany's occupation of the Rhineland as a casus belli; when the British Conservative Government entered a naval limitation pact with the Nazis; when Britain refused to heed France's advice to meet Russia's terms for a triple alliance in the spring of 1939. Last week the Entente, foremost factor in European power politics for 36 years, became another casualty in Hitler's war.

"The ties of comradeship and excessive fidelity are completely broken now," declared Foreign Minister Baudouin of the Petain Government in denouncing Britain's "treachery." At Vichy, the provisional French capital, diplomatic relations with the old ally were formally severed.

To American Ambassador William C. Bullitt, Minister Baudouin conveyed Marshal Petain's "extreme indignation," but assured him for what it was worth: "There is nothing that can break the friendship of France toward the United States." To foreign pressmen M. Baudouin continued: "Yesterday's French dead at Oran have rendered us the service of liberating us from England's domination, allowing us to be politically free to follow a purely French policy." France, he added, was determined, with the consent of Germany and Italy, to defend herself by sea and air against any further attacks. French warships were directed to intercept British merchant ships encountered on the high seas. Shore batteries were to attack any British ship approaching within twelve miles of the French coast. France was all but at war with Britain.

The Petain Government followed up its severance of relations by heaping Gallic recrimination upon the head of its late Entente partner. His voice knife-sharp with bitterness, the Foreign Minister charged: England had provided only slight military aid to France, thinking selfishly solely of the defense of the British Isles, and must therefore shoulder the blame for "the loss of the war"; France had mobilized 3,000,000 men, England only 200,000; the great strategic error of the campaign occurred when at England's insistence the French Army left its trenches to rush into the Lowlands to the fatal battle of the Meuse; General Weygand had asked the British to strike southward to help close the Artois gap, but after dallying for two days, the British suddenly abandoned Arras and raced northward towards the Channel ports; the British saved four-fifths of their troops at Dunkirk while the French lost half of theirs; at the Somme and Aisne, General Weygand had asked for British troops and aviation, but only five of the 40 air squadrons engaged were British and no British troops ever arrived.

Epitaph of the Entente Cordiale was written by the Diplomatisch Politische Korrespondenz of the Nazi Foreign Office: "Lack of all true idealism was evident in its end."

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