Sovereignty & Union

Not since the days of the great Marshal Lyautey had Frenchmen been so conscious of empire. The consciousness arose from the persistent (and unduly alarming) rumors that France would be asked to put some of her strategic overseas bases under international "trusteeship." To the Consultative Assembly hurried Foreign Minister Georges Bidault to defend his country's colonial record, challenge its critics, and proclaim a new deal for an empire second only to Britain's.

Said Minister Bidault: "We cannot tolerate that anyone should try to dispossess France of her sovereignty of certain territories. . . . There are peoples to whom we owe an outstanding debt . . . whom we must lead toward a better future. The French nation, the nations that accompany us on our road and are faithful to us: that is the real trusteeship!"

For once, no cries of dissent welled from the Assembly. For Right, Center and Left alike, empire was above politics.

Frenchmen All. A special Government statement already had announced that the empire would be sweepingly reorganized as "the French Union." Most likely, it would become federal in structure, with representative governments for its components and a representative Federal Assembly of the Union. Specifically, the Government had assured Indo-China, one of the empire's richest colonies (tin, rubber, rice, strategic bases) that it would have democratic and equalitarian liberty, including "ministers chosen from among the Indo-Chinese [23,000,000] as well as from French residents [41,000]."

The new Union has been in the making ever since the Brazzaville Conference of early 1944. There Charles de Gaulle's ministers began to blueprint a grand United States of France, girdling the globe and revolutionary in its treatment of colonials. Within the Union they plan a wide measure of economic and political decentralization, a great development of education and sanitation, an exploitation of resources for the benefit of the inhabitants, a rapid training of colonials in democratic administration.

Last week, directly after Foreign Minister Bidault's speech, the Government took another step toward the new Union. Upon some 20,000 creamy, copra-gathering South Sea Islanders, inhabitants of French Raiatea, Tahaa, Huahine, Bora-Bora, Maupiti, Mopelia, Rurutu and Rimatara, it bestowed French citizenship.

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