Charles De Gaulle 1943 – 1945: I

The 2026 film De Gaulle: Liberté deals with the period 1943-1945. Here we print one of George Orwell’s newspaper reports from March 1945, describing De Gaulle’s plans for post-war France.

De Gaulle Intends to Keep Indo-China:

But French Apathetic on Empire

General de Gaulle’s recent broadcast on the fighting in Indo-China aroused much discussion, and the newspapers printed it in full with big headlines, though in many cases without commenting on it.

His earlier statement on Indo-China a few weeks ago had passed almost unnoticed, but the present crisis has set many people talking anew about the half-forgotten problem of the French colonies.

The broadcast included a warm tribute to the courageous fight put up by the French and Indo-Chinese troops, and also included the usual implied criticism of Britain and America, but its main object was evidently to emphasise the importance of France’s part in the Pacific end of the war. De Gaulle is too good a soldier not to realise, better than the majority of his countrymen, that the position of France’s remoter colonies will be precarious, even after Japan is defeated, and doubtless it seems to him good policy to stake out as large a claim as possible in the forthcoming Pacific victory.

Some of what he said was exaggerated and misleading, and he has been able to make similar statements before, precisely because the average Frenchman is only intermittently interested in imperial policy.

This has been especially true since the liberation. Except when something violent happens, the French overseas territories hardly find their way into the French Press. It is only by dipping into quite obscure periodicals that one can learn, for instance, that in Algeria and Morocco the Vichy apparatus is still largely functioning and the local Socialist and Communist Press is fighting for its life against heavily subsidised newspapers of reactionary tendency.

But, even when home affairs were less pressing, the word “Empire” has never aroused the same powerful emotions, for or against, in France as it does in England.

In England the anti-Imperialist tradition of the Labour Party, inherited from the old Liberal Party, is no doubt partly hypocritical, but it exists, and to some extent it influences policy.

In France, even before the disaster of 1940, it was always noticeable that the Left-Wing parties had much less to say on this subject. No doubt this was partly because Frenchmen, as well as foreigners, tended to generalise too freely from the admirable lack of colour prejudice in France itself.

But one has also got to consider the psychological effects of the defeat, which have left so deep a mark on French political thought, even in extreme-Left circles. It is curious that there is very little awareness here of the strategic dependence of the French Empire on other Powers. Large portions of it would be quite indefensible without American or British help, and Indo-China, in particular, is very unlikely to remain in French possession without the agreement of China as well.

Yet one does not see admissions of this kind made in print or in public speeches, though thoughtful Frenchmen may make them in private. It is apparently more painful to have to admit in France that Madagascar lies within the British orbit, than to admit in England that Jamaica lies in the American orbit.

The shock of the defeat naturally induced in almost everyone a desire to feel strong, and one can see the result in the unrealistic way in which strategic questions are often discussed. One can see it again in the general tendency to attribute the defeat of 1940 primarily, though not wholly, to deliberate treachery.

It is significant that Pétain is often referred to in the Press as Pétain-Bazaine, thus being linked with the other great scapegoat of French history. It would probably have made no difference to the outcome of the war of 1870 if the wretched Bazaine had held out in Metz for six weeks longer, but an identifiable traitor on whom to put the blame was no doubt helpful in the recovery of national pride. The recrudescence of the nationalistic outlook, product of defeat, is very marked in France at present, and the equivocal attitude even of Communists and Socialists towards imperialism is one symptom of it.

De Gaulle has not yet made any very comprehensive statement on imperial policy. From what he has said hitherto, his ideas seem to lie towards vigorous economic development, and the raising of the standard of living of the colonial populations, rather than towards an extension of self-government.

One newspaper, reporting Wednesday’s broadcast, stated hopefully that de Gaulle had promised “a new status” to Indo-China, but the text of the broadcast does not seem to bear this out. Indeed, if his various pronouncements on this subject mean anything, they mean that he intends to keep Indo-China inside the French Empire and on as nearly as possible the same footing as before.

His speech aroused great interest, but, as usual, received no genuine criticism in the Press. It is an index of the state of the French Press that not a single paper pointed out that this was a matter on which China might have something to say.

Indeed, when such topics do get any discussion, it is usually not in the daily Press but in little struggling weeklies, whose pages are all too often chequered by blank spaces bearing nothing but the dismal word, Censure.

Paris, March 17* The Observer, 18 March 1945

• Presumably the date that Orwell’s article passed SHAEF censorship. All journalism had to go through the censor.