Marshal Petain in an interview with the United Press is reported to have declared that the United States had the power to guide the world to peace, or to an inter-continental war. In saying that he spoke no more than the truth, though not the truth that he apparently intended. It is true that the United States has such power, and is in fact already using it. It is only by ensuring that the Allies are victorious that peace can be secured and the inter-continental war, which Marshal Petain foresees, avoided. That has all along been ty. President Roosevelt, and is becoming inly so by the people of the United States. Peace can only be obtained by the destruction of Naziism and wil tive that America may start. Whether this is merely an expression of his own opinion, or a German inspired peace feeler is not clear but it is certain that, as matters stand, it will meet with no particularly enthusiastic response.
The Marshal is reported as having said his for America was dictate peace to Europe. realize those facts, and the depression which prevailed in France after the collapse which have made it possible for Vichy to follow a policy inimical to the best interests -of the French Empire.
Fortunately there is a large section of the French people who do not see things in the light that Marshal Petain does, or those of his advisers animated by purely selfish considerations with regard to doing the best they can for themselves out' of France's sad plight. There are still French people who remain loyal to the cause for which Great Britain and her Allies are fighting, not only those who support General de Gaulle, but those others in occupied and unoccupied France who realize that their hope lies in the successful efforts of the democracies to destroy the menace which covers Europe. There can be no peace until that has been removed, and the democracies enabled to proceed with the establishment of a new order with some prospect of a permanent security which a chauvinistic Germany has threatened for so long a time. That is a fact which the rulers of the democracies fully realize, and which Marshal Petain obviously does not.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.