Word: darlan
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...swift, numbing surprise was the assassination of Admiral Jean François Darlan, the onetime French collaborator who had become America's friend, or America's tool, or perhaps America's moral Frankenstein (see p. 24). The nation heard Franklin Roosevelt's angry reaction: ". . . first-degree murder." It listened to good grey Secretary of State Cordell Hull: ". . . an odious and cowardly act." But many Americans did not know whether to be horrified or relieved, and their not knowing was a heavy burden...
Anxiety & Peace. One man who recognized the anxiety, and seemed to discover its cause, was Pundit Walter Lippmann. A few hours before a bullet ended Admiral Darlan's baffling career, he wrote: "... We have been put to a very severe moral test in North Africa, and ... we are not meeting that test in a way which satisfies our consciences and keeps our spirits whole...
...actions which are the cause of this anxiety-not that we maintained relations with Vichy, not that we used those relations to do espionage and to conspire, and not that we dealt with Admiral Darlan. ... It is the way so many, and some in high places, are talking about these things that does such grave injury to our course, and to our self-respect, and to our confidence in the future...
...rose to the top of a soiled political heap. One of them was Pierre Laval, who rose to the honor of a meeting with Hitler to which the tragicomic Benito Mussolini was not invited. If Hitler wins, Pierre Laval may yet be a successful man, Jean François Darlan's deal with General Eisenhower might have profited him eventually, but his award was an assassin's bullet...
...Magyars had made a bold beginning and seemed to have got away with it. Hope returned to Admiral Horthy. After all, Jean François Darlan was an Admiral...