Word: proconsuls
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Soldier to Proconsul. In 1937 Wavell returned to the Near East as commander in chief in Palestine and Transjordan, largely stamped out the bloody Jewish-Arab riots. In 1939, he assumed command of the British forces in Egypt. World War II swelled his Egyptian garrison into the Imperial Army of the Nile, an amorphous instrument which he painstakingly fashioned into a weapon that drove the Italians out of Cyrenaica. It was a famous victory at a time when Britain, standing singlehanded against the Axis might, was staggering under successive defeats. For the first time the name of Wavell was heard...
...Wavell doffed his uniform, was made a peer and Viceroy of India. The soldier became the proconsul. But he was unlike any other proconsul who had ever been seen in India. Hitherto it had been deemed a necessity to surround the Viceregal office with a pomp and pageantry that would dazzle even India's dazzling princes. Wavell's predecessor, Lord Linlithgow, a thrifty Scot, used to travel around India in a luxurious, cream-colored train because "Indians are impressed by these things." The new Viceroy arrived in India in a rumpled lounge suit. Instead of taking the royal...
...independence (TIME, Aug. 28) was a "sequel" to this correspondence. That might or might not be true. But as historic and human documents, the letters were unique. Each of the correspondents was an arch-type-Gandhi of the saintly man turned political crusader, Wavell of the worldly, disciplined, cultured proconsul. Each was highmindedly and absolutely convinced of the rightness of the cause he typified. The result epitomized the present phase of the problem of India and Britain-deadlock tempered, in this case, by Gandhi's and Wavell's deep humanity...
...extent of French collaboration with Germany was signaled by the forced resignation in November of North African Proconsul...
North Africa's Proconsul Weygand is the only important foe of all-out collaboration left in the Vichy Government. By holding out against German demands in North Africa he has prevented wholesale desertions to Free Frenchman General Charles de Gaulle. His resignation or his surrender to the collaborationists would probably precipitate internal troubles and give the Germans an excuse to intervene to preserve order. It was significant that reports from Vichy included the statement: "There is no indication as to the duration of his visit-or the date of his return to Algiers...