The Making of Yesterday: The Diary of Raoul De Roussy De Sales
OCTOBER 12,1942. — Life has published an editorial in the form of a letter to the British, by far the most offensive piece of boorishness on this subject that I have read. We have come to your help, says Life, forgetting your debts from the first war, giving you Lend-Lease, and so on. Now you can help us. How? By giving up your empire. America isn’t fighting to safeguard the British Empire, and she will abandon England (sic) if the latter doesn’t renounce her empire. The article admits that America’s war aims are not very clear, but says that they certainly don’t include the preservation of the British Empire.
The following questions may well be asked: (1) What does the author of this article mean by the British Empire? What does he intend to substitute for the voluntary Commonwealth? (2) If he is thinking only of India, what solution does he propose?
People want to abolish empires, yet have no idea what they mean by this. They want to emancipate all men economically and, especially, politically. They want the Burmese and the Congo natives to be organized democratically, to elect a Senate and a House of Representatives, to have a Republican Party and a Democratic Party, to become decent, respectable, and moderately progressive countries like the United States. They are laboring under the delusion that the British are still governed by George III, that they tyrannize their subjects, and that yellow, brown, black, or café-au-lait George Washingtons are going to rise up everywhere.
American Messianism in this vague but pretentious form is a formidable thing. It will stimulate anti-American feelings in Europe that are already embittered. America will only make herself look ridiculous and will lose out in the end.
In my opinion, the object of this war-revolution is primarily and perhaps solely to save and to “restore” Western civilization, which concerns the peoples of Europe and their cousins in America. The task is hard enough in itself. To complicate and confuse it still further by introducing a vague universal sentimentality — based on the assumption that the Africans and Asiatics are a priori in agreement on the objective to be attained — results merely in making that objective inaccessible. It would be folly to extend to the Japanese or the Malagasy the principles of a civilization whose pillars are men like Plato, Pascal, Shakespeare, Bacon, and Descartes.
October 17. — Yesterday my dentist spent an hour and a half, not working on my teeth, but discussing England’s crimes. Being a Jew, “intellectual,” young, and leftist, he is pro-Russian, pro-Chinese, pro-Hindu, but anti-British. What obviously worries him most is the problem of India. He has studied the whole theory of British imperialism. We shall not win the war if the British persist in keeping the Indians in bondage. All peoples must be liberated, and so forth.
“Certainly Gandhi is a saint,” he told me. I asked him why. “Because he’s absolutely against war.”
I wore myself out trying to explain that pacifism in time of war is not a virtue. He couldn’t understand. American pacifism, its horror of war as a sin, has gone over to Gandhi, the pacifist saint. My dentist believes that only Roosevelt can clear up the mess in India. Every argument I bring up to show him that, after all, India is still a matter that concerns the British falls on deaf ears.
Meanwhile the editors of Life (that new world power) are annoyed at having let loose a storm with their letter to the British. Harry Luce tries to explain that he never intended to criticize the British Commonwealth, but only to widen the scope of the war aims. In an advertisement appearing in a great many publications, Life announces a series of articles on England, evidently intended by the editors to repair the damage already done.
But the title of the proposed articles is “How good are the British as allies?” — which is adding insult to injury. What would be the reaction over here if the British started a discussion on “ How good are the Americans as allies?” In the same advertisement, the editors of Life courageously declare, “We are neither pro-British nor anti-British,” which leads the reader to conclude that, despite the war, the editors of Life, as a sovereign power, have remained neutral.
October 21. — It has never been so clear that we do not know the reasons for this war. Nor has it ever seemed so clear that we are unable to stop it — which could be a disaster a hundred times worse than the present state of affairs. A few days ago, Goebbels said that Germany was no longer fighting for political aims. She is no longer interested in the triumph of Nazism, or in German honor, or in any other nonsense, but merely in the conquest of lands and their organization. That Goebbels can revive these primitive conceptions — classic if one wishes — of the war of conquest must prove that everything has died in Germany — everything but hunger, fear, and a few other elementary instincts.
October 23. — Prohibition. In the Senate, the law on drafting eighteen-year-olds was delayed by an amendment forbidding the sale of liquor in Army camps or neighboring zones. For a while it was thought that this amendment would be passed. It was not, but the mere fact that it seemed possible is interesting. Fanatical puritanism, the need for annoying one’s neighbor, is a tremendous force in this country. I shouldn’t like to bet that prohibition is really a dead issue.
October 25. — In the Senate, during a debate on drafting men of eighteen, Senator Tydings had the nerve to say: “Certainly the countries which have been under attack have been damn glad to get the United States as an ally. Make no mistake about that. This is not altogether our war. If Great Britain, New Zealand, and Canada are not going to let their young men go into battle before they are nineteen years of age, the United States should not bear the unequal burden. We are already financing the whole outfit. We are lending them everything we can. I do not approve of keeping books on our Allies, but there is a rough yardstick of justice and equal distribution which should not be abandoned. I do not want Uncle Sam, when it is all over, to be called Uncle Simple.”
There’s an example of t he generosity and courtesy that exist between the Allies. I shall never understand why national egoism is considered a virtue, under cover of which all sorts of insults can be exchanged, while on the surface fine speeches are made about a future brotherhood of nations that will regenerate mankind, establish forever equality and confidence among peoples, and set up a reign of international good will on earth. As far as I know, Tydings is no Borah, but he has an obsession about America’s becoming the dupe of her allies. The main idea is not to do any more than the others are doing, and especially to avoid being played for a sucker.
A Nazi, whose name I can’t remember, said that the gentleman type should disappear from the face of the earth. I think it may truthfully be said that this aim has already been accomplished. Never have the governments and so-called educated classes of the Allied nations treated each other with such downright rottenness. And it’s hard to know whether to give the palm to the Americans or the Russians in this respect. The British are struggling desperately against all odds to maintain some sort of decency in their comments on their allies, and even on their enemies. Perhaps that’s why they’re hated. Perhaps Wallace believes that the Age of the Common Man means the triumph of simplicity, of candor, and of humility. But in the meantime it is rudeness that has really triumphed. Certain words like loyalty, courtesy, and honor have become a joke. The new attitude is represented by the editors of Life. It’s not a pleasant thought.
October 27. — Last night Willkie was on the air with the long-expected report of his round-the-world trip. The speech seemed badly written and was delivered in the deep, raucous voice characteristic of Willkie. His argument, in so far as he had one, ran as follows: The peoples visited by this twentiethcentury Marco Polo (Near East, Russia, Far East) are tired of imperialism. They wish to be free. There must be no more colonics or anything else that indicates a racial or even a cultural hierarchy. All these peoples are looking to America, which thus possesses a reservoir of international good will.
Willkie also declared that the world was small, and uttered some remarkable banalities on the theme of the brotherhood existing between a Chinese coolie, a veiled woman in Baghdad, a Russian worker, and Mrs. Smith of Sioux City. All of them are brought closer and united by the airplane, the radio, and American movies. According to Willkie, Hollywood plays a part similar to that of Rome in the Middle Ages (he didn’t say so, but that’s the general idea). A solution must be found for the problem of India, and America should take a hand in the matter. He didn’t say how. In fact, America should intervene everywhere to free enslaved peoples and destroy the monster of imperialism.
Throughout the speech Willkie spoke of the Japanese, Hitler, and the imperialists on the Allied side as though they were in the same category. He played right into the hands of Goebbels. Consciously or not, his speech was bluntly anti-British, altogether in the style of the editorial in Life. He didn’t have a word to say about the civilizing work the British have done in India or elsewhere — indeed, not a word about Western civilization, which is at stake in this war.
The sad part about it is that Willkie is right when he says the whole world has its eyes turned toward America; but if all that’s to come out of this vast “reservoir of good will” is vanity and ignorance, then there’s no hope anywhere.
I’m not at all surprised that his meeting with dc Gaulle went off badly. It appears that he advised the General to withdraw his troops from Syria and give up all claim to the French Empire.
October 28. — Willkie’s speech, though not exactly producing a storm of enthusiasm, was well received even by the British, who probably preferred to pretend they didn’t understand the attacks made on them. A few papers here discreetly remark that Willkie is rather naive and that his radical solutions for the problems of the entire world, based on a forty-day trip by airplane, are not very sound; but the attitude of most of the press is quite different: Willkie’s very simplification of the problem is appealing to a nation which prefers ready-made solutions. Freedom for all is an attractive slogan. Willkie is compared to Marco Polo. He caught only brief glimpses of everything, yet people are willing to listen to him as though he really were the discoverer of Russia and the Orient.
Willkie is the Average Man in the role of explorer. Nobody seems to have been struck by the fact that even if he were a genius he could have seen very little on a trip like that. Quite the contrary. People trust him precisely because his observations are superficial and simplified, and because they provide a key to everything. A strange country this, with a blind belief in “experts” on the one hand, and on the other a readiness to trust the judgment of the first person who comes along, on the most complex problems, provided he thinks and talks in general terms.
November 2. — Elections. Tomorrow the elections take place for the House, a third of the Senate, and many of the governors. The papers are amazed at the apathy shown by the public. The voters will go to the polls tomorrow just as, on Sunday, the Catholics go to church and the Protestants go to chapel. Everything has been done to dig up “issues” for the elections. But there aren’t any. The Republicans will gain some seats, it appears, because people are dissatisfied with the conduct of the war, with the way news is released, and with a number of other little things. But neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a program. The Democrats possess one advantage in that they have an objective to win the war. The Republicans have nothing, except Willkie.
The real reason for the public’s indifference to the elections is quite simple if only people would acknowledge it. In wartime, and especially in a war like this, democracy is suspended de facto, and no change in the situation will result from the gesture of going to vote tomorrow. It might be another story if the war should go really badly in ‘44; but even so, the Republicans would have to alter their platform from a collection of meaningless cliches to something worth while. The truth is that their party died in 1932 and may never again come to life.
November 8. — Last night American troops landed at several points along the coast of North Africa. This is one of the most important and striking pieces of news to come out of the war. The secret had been well guarded, though for several weeks it had been known that an expedition to Africa was in preparation. Last night at nine o’clock, Roosevelt made the announcement over the radio. He spoke to the French in their own language. He said the landings were directed against the Axis, and were designed to prevent a German invasion of North Africa and to prepare for the liberation of France.
So far as can be ascertained, the expedition is large and well-equipped. The landing points have not been named, and there is no word of what is happening. The Vichy troops are offering resistance, but no one knows how much. Petain has cabled a protest to F.D.R., but there have been no other manifestations.
If the expedition has been well planned, it should meet with success and the consequences will be incalculable. Fear must be expressed over the inexperience of the American troops, the likelihood of blunders, too great a confidence in American prestige. The Vichy men are in a strange, pugnacious state of mind. They have built up a conception of honor that has enslaved them. They are obsessed by the great mistake of June, 1940.
And de Gaulle? There is no mention of his taking part in the expedition. That would have been fatal. There is a rumor that General Giraud is in Algiers and that he has asked the French troops to rally to the Allies. Assuming that Giraud or Nogues or someone else is able to bring North Africa into the Allied camp, but without accepting the leadership of de Gaulle, what will become of the latter?
Meanwhile the British advance in Libya; the synchronization of the two operations is magnificent.
Where is Willkie now, with his accusations about the lack of plans and the inaction of the government? Where is the Republican victory of November 3, with its implication of a rebuke to Roosevelt? Once again events have proved him right.
Will France, in her appalling dereliction, neglect still another opportunity to vindicate herself? It’s strange that I have so little faith in France now. But it’s a fact.
November 9. — In answer to a final appeal by F.D.R., asking him not to resist, Petain said yesterday that he was “stupefied and saddened” by what Roosevelt had told him; that he did not believe his explanations; that North Africa was not threatened by the Germans; and that he, Petain, had always kept his word (forgetting Indo-China, Syria, and a few other small items). Under the circumstances, Petain declared, he had given the order to resist. Whereupon Laval informed Tuck that Vichy was breaking off diplomatic relations with the United States.
And so what could just as well have happened two years ago has finally taken place. Hull said he didn’t, care what Vichy did. He justified his policy by saying that, among other advantages, the maintenance of relations with Vichy had enabled the North African expedition to be prepared. I don’t find this explanation very agreeable, smacking of Kurusu. In short, the honest Hull means that by keeping on good terms with Vichy he was able to put one over on Pétain and Company.
It’s impossible to predict how some people will react. Pauline - telephoned me last night in a state of panic, to say that she couldn’t believe the rupture with Vichy was real. Though she’s always been anti-Vichy, this news has overcome her. She can’t stand the thought of any “rupture” between France and the United States.
Undoubtedly, it’s not pleasant to think that Frenchmen and Americans are killing each other for the first time in history, more especially since nothing could be more futile than the resistance ordered by Pétain; but there is no place for sentiment in war,
November 13. — Still a great many rumors and few facts that can be confirmed.
The Germans have achieved the occupation of France with the exception of Toulon. Contradictory rumors about the navy are constantly circulating. Some say that a number of the ships have left. Others say that the whole fleet is still at anchor. The reason the Germans have stayed out of Toulon appears to be that they are afraid the navy will resist. They say that the officers have given their word to repel any attack. This navy is in a very peculiar position. It has no commanders except those on board. As for Darlan, it seems that he is doing everything he can to get in the good graces of the Allies. He issued an appeal for the navy to come to Africa and join the Allies. But in spite of what people have said about Darlan’s prestige in the navy, he doesn’t seem to be getting very enthusiastic obedience. Perhaps the officers feel there is a limit to opportunism.
November 14. — The merry-go-round in Africa is still whirling madly. Yesterday Darlan, who is in Algiers, issued a proclamation saying that, on November 10, Pétain, thinking Darlan had been deprived of his liberty, had turned over the responsibility for the command in North Africa to Noguès, but that Darlan was in fact perfectly free and that, in accord with Noguès and Yves Chatel, Governor of Algeria, he not only ordered the fleet to come over to the Allies but also commanded the authorities in Africa to collaborate with the Americans. All this, according to Darlan and Noguès, in the name of the Marshal.
I don’t know to what extent the State Department has really thought to make serious use of Darlan, but this morning it was announced that Pétain himself has repudiated him, which makes the Admiral a kind of super-traitor.
Saw David Cohn yesterday. Very gloomy. He’s convinced that this country has no interest in the war and is looking forward to only one thing: a speedy peace so that plastic Fords can be obtained on the market. He predicted an irresistible wave of isolationism.
The African business has caused another surge of optimism. There is talk of the war’s coming to an end by Christmas or June at the latest. The frightful thing is that this isn’t altogether impossible. If Hitler were really brilliant, he would lay down his arms tomorrow and say to the Allies: “I leave it all up to you. Make whatever peace you want.” Through sentimentality, stupidity, laziness, and indifference, the Allies would give Germany whatever she wanted.
All this business about France (Darlan, Noguès, Pétain) reveals how deeply rottenness has penetrated the country, or at any rate its leaders. There is only one country I believe in now: England.
November 16. — The situation is absurd. In so far as it can be reconstructed, here it is: —
Darlan has reaffirmed his loyalty to Pétain and has said that the latter, being a prisoner of the Germans, had been obliged to disown him — which did not prevent him from speaking in the name of the Marshal. He has proclaimed himself protector of French interests in Africa. General Giraud, working under his orders, is in command of the French troops now fighting the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. All this has been done with the approval of the local American authorities, who have expressed their satisfaction at seeing Darlan assume control of the administration in Africa. The Morocco radio, controlled by the Americans, concludes its broadcasts with “ Vive le Maréchal.”
Thus, the first result obtained by the arrival of American troops in French territory has been to confirm a traitor’s authority and a fascist regime. The more or less official explanation is that military advantages will be obtained with a minimum of risk. Darlan has something to offer, though just what isn’t very clear since the navy no longer seems to obey him. Vichy laws are still functioning in North Africa, protected by the American flag.
It is understandable that such a situation can meet with the approval of Frenchmen in North Africa. The colonials are inclined to be reactionary and are very likely favorable to Darlan. But what effect will it have on France? The advantages gained by the Americans will have to be very great to compensate for the loss in moral prestige involved in this approval of Darlan. The effect on England is no less disastrous. People just don’t understand. And then there are the other nations. What can the Russians think?
The papers here don’t dare say a word about this Darlan business. It brings up such tremendous issues and appears to be so dishonorable that they prefer to say that the government must have something up its sleeve and that everything will come out all right.
For my part, I am now certain that nothing good can come out of this war. It is rotten through and through.
November 17. — Yesterday General Marshall, Chief of Staff, called a few of the more notable reporters, including Walter Lippmann, into his office and explained the situation in North Africa. It appears that the Americans had counted on Giraud as a rallying point for all Frenchmen, but at the last moment it was discovered that he was completely useless in this respect. J ust then, Darlan offered his services, and Eisenhower, who was at a loss, accepted them. Having Tunisia ahead of him to conquer, Eisenhower didn’t want chaos in Algeria and Morocco. Apparently, only Darlan could guarantee that things would be calm, more especially since he claimed to speak for Pétain. Marshall thus explained that it was purely a military question which had not the slightest bearing on the future. The State Department, then, has taken refuge behind the Army.
If this explanation is correct, which is quite possible, it merely proves that the famous political preparation so bragged about did not exist. Murphy and his agents were completely mistaken, which doesn’t surprise me at all.
In France, Weygand has been arrested by the Germans. Pétain has issued a proclamation depriving Darlan of all military and civil authority, but people aren’t certain that Pétain really wrote this himself. They think it might have been forced on him by Laval and the Germans. But that’s beside the point. Pétain is finished — unless Roosevelt and Leahy have any more schemes on foot regarding him.
American papers are exhibiting a rather unusual lack of courage. A few timid editorials are beginning to come out, but there is an obvious reluctance to take a clear stand, except for Dorothy Thompson, who, as always, is courageous in such moments. However, her article was censored for England, which is an alarming sign.
I feel that de Gaulle will gain a great deal by all this, for the simple reason that he is the only one to have followed a more or less straight line.
As for Washington, explanations will have to be forthcoming, whether they like it or not. If Flandin, Pucheu, and others of that breed have not been invited, then it would be better to say so. The public might get confused and end up by believing that the French must all be fascist and that therefore they are the ones to treat with. Unfortunately, in North Africa the colonials are indeed fascist and they like Darlan. When I think of what Frenchmen in France must be thinking today, my head starts reeling.
November 20. — The day before yesterday, Pétain abdicated. He remains Chief of State and “the incarnation of France,” but he has transferred all practical powers to Laval, who in fact becomes dictator. Laval can now make decisions by himself.
And so ends the unfortunate Pétain venture. Not being German, I don’t pretend that the French aren’t responsible for the Vichy regime, the armistice, the meek acceptance of collaboration, and all the rest. If they didn’t exactly want what happened to them, they nevertheless accepted it. Petain represented a very real state of mind. Pétain was truly the symbol of a defeated France willing to try anything, provided she was not called upon to make the slightest effort — the symbol of a strangely masochistic France which had denied her own history, her allies, and all that was honorable in her.
Pétain was an anachronism that suited a middleclass and peasant France and a working class with bourgeois ideals, hopelessly trying to escape from reality into the past. Petain was the France of priests and generals; of selfish peasants and pennypinching clerks; of bankers who, like the unfort unate Demachy, used to say that “the real blood of France is her gold.” He was the France of discouraged intellectuals, of gloomy academicians, and of disreputable journalists. Pétain was a France which no longer believed in anything but money and the dead. Pétain was truly France.
November 24. — In spite of F.D.R.’s statement the other day that Darlan was a temporary expedient, there’s no way of telling what “temporary” means. The public, baffled, has accepted the sit uation, sees Darlan as a reformed traitor, believes the official thesis that the State Department has pursued a Machiavellian policy which resulted in the present position, and consequently thinks everything is going all right and that the French are a strange lot.
November 27. — Yesterday, de Gaulle wanted to make a broadcast which, I am told, was entirely devoted to denouncing Darlan. The British persuaded him to give up the idea. In a fit of pique, the Fighting French radio station in London interrupted its broadcasts. This won’t hurt anybody but the Fighting French. Today, it is said that de Gaulle is going to make a direct appeal to F.D.R. to liquidate Darlan.
In the House of Commons, an accounting of the Darlan business was requested, but Eden asked that the debate be postponed because operations in North Africa were too critical for a discussion to be held at that time. The British press is extremely critical of America’s part in the Darlan affair.
People talk about the resistance inside France, and I believe it does exist; but there are no visible signs of it. Everything about France that one can see, every gesture made by Frenchmen, whoever they may be, proves just one thing: the decay that set in ten or twenty years ago has not been checked, the defeat has not produced any serious reaction.
Even a man like Andr6 Philip, a Socialist deputy, tells me: “Obviously, what must be avoided in France at all cost after the war is chaos, revolution.” In short, what everyone wants is for France to pass gently and smoothly from her present slavery to some peaceful and orderly state — Fourth Republic, mild dictatorship, no matter what, so long as it is not very different from what people are used to.
November 28. - Yesterday the greater part of the French navy, about sixty vessels, was scuttled in the harbor of Toulon. The meager accounts given out by Vichy and by the Germans do not agree on details but are dramatic enough. At dawn yesterday, the Germans and Italians began to occupy the city. At the same time ships began to blow up. In some cases, it is said, the crews fired on each other because there was no time to open the cocks. The Germans claim they will be able to salvage some ships. Vichy says that all were sunk. A great many sailors and most of the commanders seem to have stayed on board and been drowned.
Such is the logical conclusion of Pétain’s policy. Paralysis is followed by death. For two years, this navy could have gone over to the Allies, but the petrified atmosphere induced by the Pétain regime deadened all intelligence if not courage. Suicide was the inevitable outcome.
November 30. — The Russian offensive is gaining ground and intensifying, and it may be that Germany will collapse on this front. The Germans have never suffered losses like this since the start of the war. Discounting Russian exaggerations, one is reminded of the summer of 1918.
Churchill delivered a speech yesterday which contained a direct appeal to the Italians to get rid of Mussolini and make a separate peace. In general, these maneuvers are bound to fail, but one never knows with the Italians.
(The End)