A President Flees

Swart, pig-eyed Pierre Laval could have things his own way now in France. With dictatorial powers granted to him by old Marshal Petain, with the Gestapo by his side in a country now fully under German occupation, he, free of the check-reins of government, felt he could thumb his bulbous nose at public opinion. These were main items on the well-filled Laval calendar:

> A meeting with Adolf Hitler and other Axis leaders to lay plans fora new arrangement to replace the defunct armistice.

> Application of the Nazis' anti-Semitic laws throughout France in the near future.*

> Discussions in Paris with Jacques Doriot and Marcel Deat, Fascist editors and leaders, for the creation of a single French political party. Said Deat last week: "France must . . . cooperate in Hitler's so-called New Order. [The alternative is] a collective death certificate."

At a press conference in Vichy before he set out for Paris, Quisling Laval presented himself to the press as a "different" man from the one "you have known . . . with a parliamentary halo." Said he: "I want Germany to win . . . Germany's victory will prevent our civilization from foundering in chaos. . . . An American victory would bring in its train the triumph of Jews and Communists."

Best indication of what many Frenchmen thought of the Laval regime was the circulation of a report that coloness, amiable Albert Lebrun, last President of the Third Republic, had fled to Switzerland.

* Reports were that Jews would be required to wear the Star of David, as in Germany, would be deprived of civil rights, deprived of citizenship if naturalized since August 1927, thrown out of government jobs. Divorces between Jews and "Aryans" would be facilitated. Some 1,500,000 Jews will be affected.

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