An Open Letter to Frenchmen

by JACQUES MARITAIN

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THE day on which we learned that the Allies were landing in Africa to open a second front and prepare a liberating invasion of Europe, our hearts, raised up with hope, dreamed suddenly that all Frenchmen who were determined to drive out the oppressor were going to find themselves at one stroke fraternally united. It is sad indeed that this dream was nothing more than a dream.

But this outcome is not surprising. The defeat, and the resignation shown by the men of the armistice to the defeat, and all the horrors which followed upon it, served only to prolong and to aggravate the process of scission — and the process of disintegration of political understanding and political morality in certain leading strata — which had even made possible the armistice and the succession of the Vichy government. Such processes do not terminate at one stroke of the magic wand. They will long continue to produce their effects.

As long as the French military chiefs seek to place upon the French people and the democratic idea the burden of a military catastrophe the immediate responsibility for which devolves on military preparation and supreme military leadership; as long as the ideological shams of Vichy have not been obliterated from the mind; and as long as “rightists” and “leftists” have not taken the risk of truly and resolutely placing their trust in the French people — just so long will the fraternal reconciliation of Frenchmen remain our heart’s desire rather than a reality.

In the meanwhile this desire must be fervent in each of us, and the union of all must at least exist in our hopes; and this frame of mind must translate itself by the eagerness to coöperate really and truly wherever coöperation is possible and essential.

And it is necessary, too, that our consciences be not confused and that this desire for union do not transform itself into an abandonment of the powers of judgment. The military cooperation of all French forces is an absolute and indisputable necessity. It already exists in North Africa under the American High Command, and needs only to be strengthened and extended, without any delay due to a desire for achieving beforehand the political unification of all fighting Frenchmen. Wholehearted unity in the fight against the enemy is the first and foremost consideration.

But in the name of this unity some of our countrymen and some of our American friends are asking Frenchmen to wipe away their “quarrels” — as if it were a question of ordinary quarrels between political parties and not of that terrible split which will divide Europe, on the day of peace, between the former accomplices of the vanquished totalitarian order and the men of a new democracy. The observations which follow, and which were prompted by Antoine do Saint-Exupéry’s generous though confused appeal to all Frenchmen to unite, have as their aim to try to distinguish the true from the false in the questions which are prodding the consciences of many of us, and thereby to free of obstacles the field where union is both immediately realizable and necessary; finally also to point out the conditions under which a provisional political union has a chance of becoming feasible.

Frenchmen, let us all be united in the fight against Germany and let us not permit any other consideration to compromise the military exigencies of war, which we must wage loyally to the end, side by side with the adversaries of the common foe — this is an immediate duty. This duty has imposed itself upon us since September, 1939. It imposed itself upon us in June, 1940. More than ever, it is ours now.

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Some men have denied this duty and have broken this union: they are those who gave up fighting on June 17, 1940, who denounced our alliance with Great Britain and led the French people into the snare of the armistice. We must not forget that.

Frenchmen, let us reconcile ourselves, so that together we can rebuild our country in freedom! This work of reconciliation is subject to a preliminary condition: to find France and her mission once again. It is distinct from the immediate duties of warfare. It is of a spiritual and political order. It demands that the people of France be in a position freely to affirm their will, and to ensure the acceptance of a common political and social ideal. For the moment, we are faced with a nation abominably wounded, tortured by her oppressor — with a nation whose conscience is cruelly torn by her own leaders.

Undeniably the division between those who, during the great ordeal, resigned themselves to the Nazi order and totalitarian Europe, and those who remained true to the vocation of France, forms the profoundest schism that our history has ever known. This schism has been created by those same men who betrayed the people and the spirit of our soil. Appeals to unity cannot overcome this schism. Such a task will require a tremendous effort of conscience and civic virtues. May God grant that because of the initial fault of these same men no innocent blood shall flow ! France will, in any case, have to get rid of them and of their ghost of a “National Revolution” before the reconciliation of Frenchmen becomes possible. We must not forget that either.

It is France herself who, for over two years, has summoned us to continue the fight. The people of France have continued it in despair and in darkness, disarmed, hungry, at the price of a terrible struggle waged, not only against the foe, but also against Frenchmen who saw the salvation of their country in the acceptance of slavery. Heroic boys have fled France to continue the fight under a free and open sky. The dead of Bir Hacheim and the sailors of the Surcouf were their comrades. Now, some Frenchmen who for two years adopted an attitude of expectancy, and whose upright intentions are unquestionable (I won’t speak of the others) are becoming aware that, henceforth, there can be but one part for a Frenchman of military age to play: that of an active fighter. Why does this thought reach them only today? It comes so late because between their innermost desire and the people of France there was a so-called French government which they mistook for France.

We are told that Vichy has disappeared, that there is no longer a Vichy government — which, by the way, is not correct; at least not yet. The point is only that Vichy is more a prisoner than ever. It is now preparing an “African Phalanx" to fight side by side with the Germans, just as it raised a “Tricolor Legion" to fight with them in Russia. (Besides, Vichy is only the sudden emergence of possibilities already latent in the social life of France, and which will remain unfortunate possibilities when the government of Vichy disappears.) In order for the Frenchmen of whom I am speaking to see in full light that which was plainly visible from the beginning, it was at least necessary that, in their eyes, Vichy should disappear. In any event, it is not sufficient to disappear in order to be absolved.

I hate the partisan spirit. I know that a large number of Frenchmen—the small industrialist eager to provide work for his employees; the civil servant devoted to his task; and many others on whose activity the existence of the nation depends — have been obliged to yield to things which they abhorred, engaged as they were in a tragedy for which they were not responsible. I also know that there was a bit of everything to be found in Vichy. There were even men who availed themselves of their functions in order secretly to help the movement of resistance and to prepare the revolt against the invader. Others were there (prodded by the generally fallacious concern that they had to “be on the spot”) in the hope of salvaging some honor; there were even police and prefects who helped, whenever they could, the victims of their masters’ laws.

I do not refer to those men. I mean the masters themselves, those who have chosen to be responsible for the leadership and direction of a regime of ignominy. I am speaking not only of those who are the men of the Nazis, but also of those who have “sincerely" played, if I may say so, the two ends of the game and have, for a time at least, accepted the possibility of a France who would play her part in the concert of a German Europe. I am speaking of all who have covered with their authority the laws, the policies, the propaganda, and the repressions of Vichy.

Those men may one day be given the opportunity to redeem themselves on the battlefields — as soldiers and not as political leaders — if they choose to join the Allies or the Fighting French. Honor and common good prohibit them from enjoying any authority in the leadership and the reconstruction of our country. Shattering the sense of justice in the hearts of men does not reconcile a nation, but throws it open to the forces of degradation. If we want to reconcile those who can be reconciled, we must not ask appeasement for those who are known to have delivered a whole people to the beasts.

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Frenchmen who are at liberty to talk should not and must not cease to proclaim that Vichy is not France and that the French people will not stand being confounded with a usurped power which has arisen from defeat and shame. The American people understand this fact instinctively. They would have understood it even better had all the French who are in this country been united to tell them so. Vichy, through the mouthpiece of its supreme authorities, has accepted collaboration with Germany. The people of France have chosen the opposite course.

It is possible that soon no one, not even former ministers of Vichy, will dare to plead the case for Vichy. Everyone will disclaim Vichy. But we shall still be hearing a great many excuses which are nothing but pleas for Vichy. What are these pleas worth? Those who make them are right in stressing the devilish horror of German blackmail. They are right in asking if, in order to repulse new acts of shame imposed by the conqueror, it was necessary to expose more children to famine and death. They are wrong, however, when they forget that the two-year succession of surrenders and dishonor — and the pretense that French “honor” and a France supposedly mistress of her decisions should bear the consequences of those decisions — resulted from a first tragic surrender, the decisive expression of which was the armistice of 1940.

Even if those things were nothing but the inexorable unrolling of the fatalities bound up with the armistice, that fact would not excuse those who committed the initial fault: such things only render more heavy their original responsibility. Alas, many of those things were readily agreed to, or even desired, by the masters of Vichy, whenever they were in line with internal political plans. Let us remember that the effort to disorganize the French people morally, to plunge them into the cult of defeatism and of a sickly self-accusation, to impose upon them the myth of a tottering chief who claims to be France incarnate, and to make them accept the abject ideology of the enemy, was the very work of the Pétain regime.

Must we be thankful to Vichy for not having been even worse? Let us suppose so; those sorry Frenchmen were still Frenchmen. They could have declared war on the Allies; they have not done it so far and we are told that this form of collaboration was rejected — eight votes to six. They could have delivered the fleet and they did not do so; they only prevented it from fighting for the liberation of France and of the world, and drove it to a heroic suicide — a terrible symbol of the only kind of heroism left to the country by nationalist defeatism and the policy of “France alone.” Even as they stand, the accounts of the Vichy regime are sufficiently loaded with liabilities.

Historians of the future will try to classify motives and intentions. For the present let us ascribe to German pressure the persecutions against resisting groups; the executions, imprisonments, concentration camps; the absence of public protest against the murder of hostages and even, in certain cases, the collaboration of the prefects in the establishment of lists of hostages; the suppression of personal liberties and the liberties of the worker; the poisonous propaganda against Great Britain and against hope for a victory, together with all the oblique blows struck against the Allies, even to the point of having Frenchmen shoot against Frenchmen; the policy of industrial collaboration with the enemy; the raising of an anti-Russian legion fighting under the orders of Hitler “on behalf of civilization”; the organized deportation of French workers to forced labor in Germany; the deluge of lies and baseness under which, had there not been the resistance of the people, France was in danger of losing her soul; the anti-Semitic laws with their resultant meanness and cruelty; the horror of camps where, as the Bishop of Toulouse told us, men, women, children were treated like cattle; and, finally, that disgrace which never before had sullied our history — the violation of the right of asylum; the delivery of alien refugees and of French naturalized Jews, men whom we had received among us and who now are given up to death (Just God! thousands of women, children, old people seized in camps and on the streets, in the unoccupied as well as in the occupied zone, hunted like game and sent to the German butchery). Let us admit that all these shameful deeds were exclusively due to German blackmail and compulsion — even though they have been represented as the glorious fruit of a free and rational policy and even though official papers and declarations overflow with apology for them! Nevertheless these shameful deeds only help to demonstrate the extent of the fault assumed by those who, when they sanctioned a sequence of errors for which they were not alone responsible, locked France into the armistice trap.

Yet there are those who still defend this armistice. They defend it with “ifs” — which, a priori, renders their conclusions doubtful. If the armistice had not been signed, we are told, al! the Frenchmen of military age would have been taken prisoners and interned in Germany. The example of Belgium, who did not sign an armistice and whose men of military age, despite this, were not sent as prisoners to Germany, shows that this would probably have remained an empty threat. The Germans want workers for their factories; they take them when they want them, either under the regime of an armistice or under the regime applied to a conquered country. It must be feared that the fate of Frenchmen is now even more atrocious — after the resistance of our people to the Vichy collaborationists disappointed Hitler’s hopes — than if the armistice had not been signed.

If the armistice had not been signed, we are told further, the Germans would have immediately captured North Africa. Perhaps. But perhaps the French and English fleets would have immediately put Italy out of the fight. In any event the authors of the armistice did not aim at preparing a North African landing place for the Allies. North Africa was only a trump card in their game.

In fact, in order to discuss the question of the armistice, one can list endlessly the “ifs” with the pros and cons of some generally deceptive technical information. It is not with “ifs” that such questions are answered; such questions are answered with a “no” when a man is faced with that which concerns the honor of his country and the faith in his people.

The men who signed the armistice did not have faith in the people of France, nor in the mission of France. Their resentment against the people and their political hatreds played an essential role in the event. We should be aw are of it, if we had not chosen to close our minds to considerations of a political nature.

We should also have some ideas as to the nature of this war, which is a revolution and, as has been said, an “international civil war.” And we should also know that “political single fronts” are usually made for the benefit of someone, and usually end up either in civil war or in some “single party” enforced by constraint.

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We are told that all formulas are nothing compared to the problems of life. The misfortune is that even those who speak in this manner must make use of language. They do not want to set themselves up as judges, but in spite of themselves, they cannot refrain from judging, and they do so unjustly. They can insist that we refrain from judging only by blaming those who, for two and a half years, have not shared their silence and their undoubtedly painful expectant attitude. It is strange indeed that, in general, they seem to be very ill-informed concerning the movement of resistance in France and the state of mind of Frenchmen. Bitter as the effects of an atrocious physical separation between French people may have been, it has not made them strangers to each other; it has not broken the communion bet ween them.

Those who want to excuse everything see in the conflicts which separate Frenchmen only personal rivalry and ambitions. Unfortunately for us, there have been these too. One of our French writers finds them “comic.” I find him indulgent. Yet there are more profound reasons for these conflicts. If it is true that the stake of this war is simply civilization and liberty, the victory of the Allies over Germany cannot be separated, except by a deception having ruinous consequences, from the victory of renewed democracy over the political and social regimes which make trash of the rights of human beings. How can the future government of France be of no concern to Frenchmen?

Since June, 1940, there has been no real French government. Until the time comes when the French people are able to decide freely as to the new constitution of their Republic, there will be no French government with a legitimate power to engage France definitely one way or another, in either internal or external policies. But when that time comes the people of France must really be in a position to express themselves freely and not find themselves subjected to the pressure or violence of some equivocal pseudo-government installed on a part of their territory and unscrupulously claiming the right to impose its will.

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In the meantime, the war continues and the war must be won. We must be united in this struggle at the side of the Allies. Such a union demands sacrifices; it also demands intelligence. There are for Frenchmen, as well as for the nationals of other oppressed countries, irritations and bitterness which might become drawbacks to the common cause.

Complete military coöperation with the Allies, the comprehension of the military necessities which America has to face, loyalty toward her President, relations not only of respect but of deep and trusting friendship — all these are strict obligations of devotion to the common cause. These things are self-evident. But let us not be asked, for that reason, to transform our unity in fighting the enemy into a political submission to an administrative power still encumbered with the ideology, the functionaries, and the economic groups whose victim France has been since June, 1940.

All other questions aside, there are men who, since the armistice, have endured the worst trials in order to continue the war at the side of the Allies. I am speaking of the soldiers of Fighting France. These men, together with their comrades in France who lead an even harder fight, and who today are mercilessly pursued — these men represent France morally, although not politically. Their leader said “no” to the enemy from the first day on; such an act cannot be blotted out. Then a heroic spirit of chivalry restored hope to Frenchmen; then, with a few comrades, — I mean you, Commandant Thierry d’Argenlieu, you, Lieutenant Savary, who first, several months after Dakar, brought me face to face with a living proof of this spirit, — de Gaulle raised once more the honor of France. The soldiers of whom I speak continue to fight under the leadership of their chief.

The Frenchmen who are now fighting under the leadership of another were for one moment unfortunate enough to be subjected to a Darlan. Thereafter a former rival of M. Laval was chosen to preside over the civil administration of Algeria. If the ill-fortune of our torn and betrayed country necessitates that French arms be divided today under different allegiances, the essential thing is that they fight with the Allies against the common enemy. The map of the war and of the world is large enough for this. Spilled blood is no longer dependent on any particular allegiance. Until the day when the living, the unfortunate living, will once more be reunited, at least the dead in the cemeteries of the Orient and the Occident will have been acknowledged by France.

The duty which rests on the Allies in this tragedy, as on all of us, is to concentrate on the people of France and to have confidence in them — in them: the people. The oppressed peoples know why they hold fast against the tortures of hell; they have a terrible need of knowing that the free peoples also know what they are fighting for. It is a great and formidable thing to fight for liberty and justice. Peoples have a thirst for purity. The United Nations carry the responsibility of this hope, which is inseparably a hope for military victory and for freedom.

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The historic meeting at Casablanca cleared the atmosphere. Nevertheless the truths which I have tried to state here continue to dominate the problems which trouble Frenchmen today. For Frenchmen it is not a question of making demands, claims, and complaints against their English or American friends: nothing is more misplaced in politics than nervous attacks and family scenes. The American policy with regard to Vichy, considered in its general directions, sought to make the best of an unbelievably difficult situation, and of that astonishing mixture of ambiguity, weakness, and doubledealing which characterized the Pétain government.

What a Frenchman was justified in expecting from this policy, however, was that the sincere friends of France who carried it out on French soil had themselves neither confidence nor any sympathy whatsoever for the regime with which they were obliged to negotiate; it was important for them never to confuse this fake regime with France herself and with the people of France, and to understand also that popular French resistance has centered its hope in the men who from the outset have held honor high and continued the fight.

Future historians will doubtless decide that by declaring that no provisional French government will be recognized before the liberation of France, America has safeguarded for the future the rights of the French people. Yet today the problem which America has undertaken is to restore to a regime of authentic freedom and to deliver from all vestige of iniquities and betrayals those sections of French territory which have re-entered the fight, and which a series of unfortunate circumstances, accidents, and expedients have placed in an equivocal and dangerous position. However grave many aspects of such a position remain, Frenchmen cannot but affirm their sincere confidence in President Roosevelt’s will to ensure freedom, and their basic duty must be to contribute their share, as efficiently as they are able, in accord with the stand that each one has conscientiously taken.

But with regard to questions relating to France and the political life of her people, they must express clearly and simply their own convictions. It is impossible for those Frenchmen who have chosen freedom to accept being subjected to the political power of men who have assumed major responsibilities in a government yielding to the Nazi new order. Even if we suppose that these men took on an odious role in good faith, with the intention of serving their country, then they must have decided that when the day came they would sacrifice their political careers on the altar of their native land. This sacrifice is very small compared with that of so many innocent persons and patriots which weighs upon their consciences.

I also believe that the only possible basis for reconciling all Frenchmen who are fighting on the side of the Allies against the Axis powers is one of legal continuity and legitimacy — I mean as complete a return as possible to the constitutional laws of the Third Republic and to the administrative forms which existed up to June, 1940, as a provisionally administrative regime destined to extend to all the progressively liberated sections of territory, and to last only until the French people shall have resolved upon the constitution of their Fourth Republic. Such a provisional regime, which would restore their liberties to workers’ organizations, which would once and for all put an end to racial laws, to political reprisals, and to the groveling remains of the creations of Vichy, and which, in conformity with the law of 1872 relating to the Conseils Généraux, would re-establish normal though elementary forms of popular representation, would be able to complete itself with special structures adapted to the exceptional needs created by the state of war.

Such a regime would have as its basis the only principle of civil life on which Frenchmen, as citizens, whatever their personal opinions, can be asked to unite today — the basis of the continuity of previously established laws which have never been abolished by any legitimate act. Finally, such a regime would doubtless permit all the free sections of the French community scattered over the world and allied to the United Nations to appoint a certain number of experts who, without governmental pow - ers but with the moral authority conferred by such an appointment, would be able to make the voice of their country heard from this day forward in the international councils.

A philosopher’s ideas may be of little interest for men of action. Nevertheless we all have duties to public opinion. As a philosopher eager to seek the truth, in politics as well as in less contingent matters, but for that very reason placed outside strictly political activities, I give you here this testimony of an independent Frenchman.