Between the Lines

The demarcation line that runs like a jagged wound across the face of France may look like a juridical fiction, but no frontier in the world is tougher to cross. To refugees, reporters and mail it opens and closes with an exasperating unpredict ability: it is harder to get a letter from Vichy to Paris than from Vichy to Timbuktu. Last week the U. S. saw its first copy of a partial solution: a standardized postcard with blanks to be filled in. Even with blanks it suggested the sufferings of Frenchmen today: " 194 .... in good health tired, .... slightly, gravely, ill, wounded killed prisoner. .

died no news from family is well....

need food money, news, baggage returned to works at is entering school at has been received....

going to , (date) Affectionate thoughts. Kisses.

(Signature)" "Don't," the instructions added, "write between the lines." But if letters could not cross the frontier, statesmen could and did. Fortnight ago, first dark little Vice Premier Pierre Laval, then doddering Chief of State Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, crossed to Paris to negotiate with Hitler. Last week, Laval, adding Paul Ba'udouin's portfolio of Foreign Affairs to those he already held, made a second trip to Paris, talked long with German civilian and military authorities.

Out of these significant meetings, the lines of "explanatory" communiques as well as of the aged Marshal's radio speech were such masterpieces of uninformative obfuscation that news-hungry correspondents had to try to read between them.

They got out their journalistic crystal balls, took a deep breath, and let themselves go.

They variously saw: a French declaration of war on Britain; cession of the French Fleet to Germany; occupation of free France by the Germans; replacement of Petain by such outright pro-Germans as French Fascist Jacques Doriot, Pierre Etienne Flandin (notorious for cabling Hitler congratulations after Munich), Marcel ("Die for Danzig?") Deat, Super-Cop Adrien Marquet; use of French naval bases by the German Fleet; surrender to Germany of the League of Nations mandate over Syria; cession of Alsace-Lorraine, French Morocco, Tunisia, the Riviera; German use of French native troops in Equatorial Africa to take the Sudan from the rear; peace drives; war drives; the kitchen sink.

Vichy wearily and flatly denied any intention to declare war or turn over its fleet; its Washington Embassy equally flatly added: "There is no foundation whatsoever to the rumors of peace negotiations, territorial cessions by France to Germany or to Italy, use of French strategical bases by those powers, or curtailment of French sovereignty in any point of France or her Empire." The crystal balls were retired and irritated newshawks pestered the Vichy Government to say, if these things were not discussed, then what the dickens was?

By week's end, with Laval's return from Paris, Vichy began, if not to explain, at least to adumbrate. The negotiations had been, not for peace, but for armistice extension. Ultimate settlement is far off, Laval stated, probably not till the end of Germany's military operations; but short-range "precise questions . . . will be answered shortly." "Diplomatic spokesmen" opened up a little. Correspondents scaled down their predictions to soberer internal realities, began to guess more cautiously. From their guesses emerged roughly the following picture:

Germany may:

1) Release 1,000,000 of the estimated 1,500,000 French war prisoners.

2) Scale down slightly the $9,200,000 a day the French are paying for the cost of German occupation.

3) Release those ports, especially Bordeaux, which the Germans do not actually need for operations against Britain, leaving France there in somewhat the same relation to Germany as Egypt to Britain.

4) Move the demarcation line north to the River Loire, with a corridor to the left bank of the Seine at Paris, permitting the Government of France to return to its capital.

5) Help get French industry going again, at least part time, at least that production most useful to Germany.

Just what France was expected to do in return was not immediately apparent. It was anybody's guess. Fact is, the majority of the French people are anti-German, anti-British, pro-French, utterly war-sick. An attempt on the part of the Vichy Government to rouse them to warfare against their former ally would be suicidal. Attempted cession of the fleet to Germany would as likely as not result in its scuttling by its own officers. German occupation of the rest of France would mean that French colonies, deprived of a homeland, would drop like plums into British hands; France's one powerful trump card is negative--when German conditions press too hard, she can always threaten to throw up the sponge.

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