Ambassador Leahy's Mission

Vichy was snowbound. The worst blizzard in 50 years swept over the provisional capital of France, blocked the roads, tied up the railways. Snow fell on the Sevigne Pavilion, where Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, 84, awaited the coming of U. S. Ambassador William Daniel Leahy. It piled in high drifts in the nearby mountains of Auvergne; the U. S. charge d'affaires, driving to meet the new Ambassador, got only 20 miles from the capital. Still partially blacked out each night, cold, cheerless, waiting, Vichy lay paralyzed under the storm, a fitting symbol of the France that has lain half-paralyzed ever since her defeat.

Admiral Leahy drove toward the silent town, through war-stricken countries where life was at a low ebb. He had left the cruiser Tuscaloosa at Barcelona, had driven through the mountains to Le Perthus, where only 23 months ago masses of defeated Loyalists jammed the narrow roads trying to reach the border. When he arrived at Lyon a special railway car was waiting. The diplomatic Admiral, long-faced, forceful, tactful, had come a long way to enter the world's most perplexing diplomatic labyrinth. It was a France in which most Frenchmen believed that their fate depended on a British victory, though a big section of the Government believed a British victory impossible. It was a France that looked toward U. S. aid to the democracies and yet believed that U. S. aid would be inadequate and too late. It was a cold, hungry, defeated and broken France, but it was above all a France in which, since the fall of Laval, some life had been stirring.

It was midnight when the Ambassador's train pulled into Vichy. The station was bright with flags, and a detachment of Mobile Guards was waiting. On the eve of the Ambassador's arrival a French newspaper had warned him that he need not think he could change French foreign policy, especially as it affected Nazi Germany. But, instead of blackout, lights shone brilliantly on all the snow-covered streets to the U. S. Embassy, and the welcome was warm.

Up bright & early next day, the Ambassador talked a sailor's language to the press. Of course the U. S. would aid Britain to the maximum "over and above our own defense requirements." Let no European fall for the story that the U. S. had sold Britain scrap iron in the 50 destroyers; said he flatly: there are "a lot of good fights left in them." Could France count on effective aid from the U. S.? "Yes, surely . . . especially the children, sick and aged. What has been done until now is almost nothing ... in relation to what the United States is preparing to do." At noon the Admiral left to present his credentials to Marshal Petain. This time there was a guard of honor, a company of French marines. The blizzard was over; the air was brightening. Simultaneously with the Ambassador's visit came a Washington announcement that the U. S. would make its agreed first food shipment to France (see p. 19). President Roosevelt cabled Marshal Petain New Year's greetings (in reply to a cable from the Marshal, which arrived late) hoping that France "may soon once again enjoy the blessings of peace with liberty, equality, fraternity."

Before he took to bed with a cold, Admiral Leahy had another message to deliver. This message was a statement of policy. U. S. policy toward Vichy has changed since Laval's fall, is now one of full cooperation with France and France's colonies, so long as this cooperation does not aid Germany. Such cooperation will include further shipments of food and medical supplies, passed through the British blockade at the request of the U. S., and the improvement of trade with the colonies. U. S. policy is to help maintain France's colonial empire intact; and if the Vichy Government is compelled--or impelled--to go to North Africa and reopen the war against Germany, it will be U. S. policy to back it with all available resources.

Most of all, Admiral Leahy was in Vichy to give a lift to French morale. Since former Ambassador William Bullitt's departure from France last summer, the French had had only meagre and discouraging reports on U. S. opinion of them. It was Ambassador Leahy's mission to give a defeated sister nation warm assurances of U. S. sympathy.

As further evidence of the changed attitude toward Vichy by the London-Washington Axis, the British Government last week officially recognized General Charles de Gaulle's Council of Defense of Empire, but took care to limit recognition to those colonies actually under De Gaulle's administration: French Equatorial Africa, the Cameroons and a couple of islands in the Pacific. Thus Britain had left wide the door to recognition of General Maxime Weygand's administration in North Africa and Syria, if Weygand decided to fight Germany. Nobody expected General Weygand so to decide except under orders from his chief at Vichy.

Either for the Franco-German record or because of the resentment lingering from Oran, this tacit invitation was received with a surly growl by Vichy. Said Minister of Colonies Rear Admiral Rene Platon: "Despite British assurances that these countries were to be handed back to us, I am convinced Britain wanted to appropriate our colonies as a sort of barter instrument in the event a compromise peace was offered them one day.".

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