FRANCE BECOMES A DICTATORSHIP... As Britain continues its slow progress on seizing or eliminating the vessels of the French navy (the latest being the merchant vessel Ile de France and the 35,000-ton battleship Richelieu), the Petain government is hard at work eliminating French democracy. According to a United Press report on Wednesday, both the French Senate and the Chamber of Deputies have voted themselves out of existence “in favor of a totalitarian dictatorship.” For the record, the votes were 395-3 in the Chamber of Deputies and 229-1 in the Senate. Sometime today the National Assembly, made up of both houses meeting in joint session, will formally kill France’s Third Republic. Then, says the U.P., the new dictatorship will get to work on pressing business -- such as trying France’s last two premiers, Daladier and Reynaud, for unspecified “crimes.”
The toughly-worded U.P. dispatch says that the French legislators, meeting in the new capital of Vichy, “rushed, through, without debate, rubber-stamp formalities setting up a dictatorship patterned closely after that of Fascist Italy, after hearing a warning that any wavering would mean the forfeiture of an ‘honorable peace’ with Germany and Italy.” The man who issued that warning is Vice Premier Pierre Laval, one of the triumvirate of men now permitted by the Nazis to rule unoccupied France. He also said, presumably with a straight face, that destroying democracy was the only way “to maintain our free institutions.” One of those institutions, the Parliament, will be only advisory from now on, with a new upper chamber chosen by the government and a lower chamber set up along the lines of Italy’s Chamber of Fasces and Corporations.
Marshal Petain’s emerging fascist regime has broken off relations with Britain, but is eager to continue “friendly” ties with the United States. They still occupy the French embassy in Washington. Yet why should we have any desire to keep up the diplomatic fiction that the satraps now running France constitute anything resembling an independent government?
...BUT THE NAZIS SAY IT’S “TOO LATE.” In any event, the French government’s attempts to curry favor with Hitler are apparently being spit back in their faces. William Shirer’s C.B.S. talk from Berlin last night quoted a number of German press comments which says the Petain regime’s “new look” will have no effect on the kind of peace Berlin and Rome dictate to France. One German news service says Nazi officials have greeted the French developments with “cool reserve,” and a prominent newspaper snorts, “This experiment comes too late for the new order in Europe.”
In Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune, Sigrid Schultz quotes another paper, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, as ridiculing Petain’s government as “the same old French democrats who now want to create an authoritarian government....This new Europe will be the creation of the victor for whom Naziism and Fascism are not mere emergency creations but the expressions of revolutionary dynamics.”
JAPAN MAKES WARLIKE NOISES. Britain could be on the verge of becoming embroiled in an Asian war as well. Japan has been demanding with increasing urgency that the British close the “Burma Road,” Nationalist China’s last land-link with the outside world, and thus a critical source of supplies for anti-Japanese forces. The British have refused, and an Associated Press story Tuesday says that “It is quite possible that the continued refusal of Britain...may result in armed Japanese action against the British Crown Colony of Hongkong.” Britain has pulled her non-military personnel out of Hongkong, just in case. The A.P. dispatch ominously cites “neutral diplomatic quarters” as expressing the belief “that Japan was not bluffing, the Burma road affair being regarded as a test case for Japan’s entire program to assume control of European-owned territories in Eastern Asia.” That program includes demands for concessions in the Dutch East Indies and French Indo-China, which Japan is getting from those conquered governments without any trouble. In fact, says the A.P., “the British refusal contrasted so strongly with the French and Dutch attitudes, which offered no resistance to Japan, that the shock to the Japanese was even greater than it might have been otherwise.”
Meanwhile, another A.P. story on Wednesday says the Japanese are going on an anti-American bender as well -- handbills reading “Down with America” were posted Tuesday in occupied Shanghai, while the Japanese military has demanded that the Roosevelt Administration apologize for the arrest of Japanese gendarmes by U.S. Marines last Sunday in Shanghai.
It could be that Japan is secretly coordinating her actions with Germany, and will declare war on Britain at just the time Hitler deems most damaging to British chances of keeping up the war in Europe. And if that happens, what do we do? Certainly we should keep the U.S. fleet in the Pacific, as the Administration says it will do. But the fight in Europe is distant from U.S. outposts and possessions, while a Japanese-British war would be fought in the same general neighborhood as several U.S.-occupied islands, such as the Philippines and Guam. And would it even be possible, in practice, to profess neutrality in such a war, when the Japanese have declared both America and Britain to be enemies? I wonder if Japan -- and not Europe -- might turn out to be the major issue in the presidential campaign.
RUMORS OF PEACE. The current issue of Time magazine has a round-up of the recent spate of peace gossip, which has since been shot down by Prime Minister Churchill’s government --
“In Washington there was talk of a negotiated peace by President Roosevelt, in New Yorka report that Germany was offering Great Britain peace with 95% of the Empire left intact. Most credible story was broadcast by Radio Commentator Wythe Williams, who seems to have excellent Nazi contacts. Crediting ‘a channel that has never failed me,’ Commentator Williams announced, ‘Sir Samuel Hoare, Ambassador of Great Britain to Spain, had a conference with General Franco...and asked the General whether in his opinion a basis could be found on which to initiate preliminary peace negotiations’....the Chicago Daily News’s Hungarian-born Correspondent M. W. Fodor wrote a sensational story of which the two main points were: 1) Germany wants to put the Duke [of Windsor] back on throne as its puppet (which has been journalists’ gossip for months); Edward’s little Duchess was once the good friend of Joachim von Ribbentrop (which has been common knowledge for years.).”
Coincidentally or not, Robert Post reports in Wednesday’s New York Times that the British Colonial Office is packing off the Duke and Duchess to the Bahamas, where the Duke will serve as Royal Governor. The Times story adds that the position is “what has been a very minor job in the British Empire.”
THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL FIELD. In Wednesday’s Washington Post, Ernest K. Lindley takes it for granted that President Roosevelt will accept nomination for a third term at the Democratic Convention next week. Therefore, whoever the President might pick for his running mate would be a more critical question than usual, “partly because the second man may have to do most of the active campaigning and partly because Roosevelt, even if elected, might resign if the present world crisis passes before the end of the third term.” So, who are the possibilities? (Vice President Garner is presumably out, since he is vying for the presidential nomination himself, and has stirred up much antagonism within the Administration by doing so). Here are Mr. Lindley’s picks --
“Possibility No. 1 is Cordell Hull. He was the President’s first choice for for the Presidential nomination during the spring months....Willkie has spoken highly of him....Possibility No. 2 is Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. He is the New Dealers’ first choice and he also has some friends among the practical politicians...Possibility No. 3 is Senator James F. Byrnes, of South Carolina. He is less well known than Hull, but he is younger and quicker on his feet and with his tongue. He is smart and popular alike with the Southern Democrats and the New Dealers...Possibility No. 4 is Scott Lucas, of Illinois, an able speaker who has differed from the President enough on both domestic and foreign policy to provide ‘balance’ for the ticket....Possibility No. 5 is Gov. Stark of Missouri, a successful businessman with a pleasing personality and a gleaming clean-government record...Possibility No. 6 is Sam Rayburn, majority leader of the House, one of the stoutest links between the New Dealers and the regular Democrats.”
Other possibilities named by Mr. Lindley -- Paul V. McNutt, Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Speaker Bankhead, Secretary Wallace, and Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson. My own guess – Secretary Hull, since he was F.D.R.’s own pick for the top job. He’d also be the best at reassuring voters that the Presidency would be in able, experienced hands if President Roosevelt did in fact resign during a third term. The foreign policy experience of Roosevelt-Hull would contrast impressively with the Willkie-McNary ticket's lack of it, in a campaign that is sure to be dominated by the war issue.
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