The biggest puzzle to us who were on the scene was our policy of dealing with Axis agents and sympathizers in North Africa.  We took into custody only the most out-and-out Axis agents, such as the German Armistice Missions and a few others.  That done, we turned the authority of arrest back to the French.  The procedure was that we investigated, they arrested.  As it turned out, we investigated, period.

Our policy was still appeasement.  It stemmed fram what might be called the national hodgepodge of French emotions.  Frenchmen then thought and felt in lots of different directions.  We moved softly at first, in order to capture as many French hearts as French square miles.  Before long that phase was over.  We were here in full swing.  Here we were occupying countries and pretending not to.  We were tender in order to avoid offending our friends, the French, in line with the policy of interfering as little as possible with French municipal life.

We left in office most of the small-fry officials put there by the Germans before we came.  We permitted fascist societies to continue to exist.  Actual sniping had been stopped, but there was still sabotage.  The loyal French saw our tactics and wondered what manner of people we were.  They were used to force, and expected us to use it against the common enemy, which included the French Nazis.  Our enemies saw it, laughed, and called us soft.  Both sides were puzzled by a country at war which still let enemies loose to work against it.

There was an astonishing number of Axis sympathizers among the French in North Africa.  Not a majority, of course, but more than you would imagine.  That in itself was a great puzzle to me.  I couldn’t fathom the thought process of a Frenchman who preferred German victory and perpetual domination to a temporary occupation resulting in eventual French freedom.

But there were such people, and they were hindering us, and we over here thought you folks at home should know three things: That the going would be tough and probably long before we cleaned up Africa and were ready to move to bigger fronts.  That the French were fundamentally behind us, but that a strange, illogical stratum was against us.  And that our fundamental policy still was one of soft-gloving snakes in our midst.

There’s no doubt that the situation was very involved.  The population was all mixed—Arabs, Jews, Spanish and French.  And there didn’t seem to be much national loyalty.  It looked as if the people, being without any deep love of the country, favored whichever side appeared most likely to feather their nest.

Outside the big cities, Algeria hadn’t fared badly under the Germans.  But the cities had been actually starving, because the Germans bought produce direct from the farms, and the cities couldn’t get it.

America promptly contributed shiploads of food to the Algerian people, but for some reason little of it showed up in the public markets.  City housewives found the stalls bare as usual, and they muttered about “les Américains.”

The Germans had paid high prices to the farmers for their crops, and they had paid in French money.  They didn’t levy the terrific indemnities here that they did in France.  Hence the farm population actually prospered, and had almost nothing to kick about.

That winter Algeria had the biggest orange crop since the war started.  In distant sections oranges were actually rotting on the trees for lack of transportation.  The farmers blamed the Americans for this, and I suppose with some justice.  True, we arranged to ship vast cargoes of oranges to England in returning convoys, but we couldn’t spare enough transportation to get the whole crop to the docks.  As far as I could see, the only way to get the Arab, French, and Spanish farmers on our side was to buy the whole orange crop, even at the high prices the Germans had paid.

When the Germans took control they demobilized the French North African Army.  That suited the people fine.  They didn’t want to fight anyway.  But after our occupation the army was mobilized again, and people grumbled: “Under the Germans we did’t have to fight.  Under the Americans our leaders make us go into the army again.”

They were passive about it, but many of them were not happy.  There was a deep fascist tinge among some of the officers of the regular army and I tried to find out the reason.  As far as I could learn, it was mostly a seeking for an ordered world to live in.  The people and the army alike were disillusioned and shattered by the foul mess into which Paris had fallen—the mess that resulted in catastrophe to France.  They were bitter against the politicians and the general slovenliness in high places.  They wanted no more of it.  They wanted things to run smoothly.  They wanted security—and they visualized it as guaranteed by the methodical rule of the Axis.

The German propaganda here had been expert.  The people had been convinced that Germany would win.  Apparently lacking any great nationalistic feeling at that point, they jumped onto whatever seemed to be the leading band wagon, and they thought it was Germany.  The same propaganda had also made them thing America was very weak.  Literally, they believed we didn’t have enough steel to run our factories or enough oil four our motors.  German propaganda had also drilled into them the glories of the New Order.  Those people believed that life for them under German control would be milk and honey, perpetual security and prosperity.  They really believed it.  Also, our troops made a poor impression, in contrast to the few Germans they had seen.  We admittedly are not rigid-minded people.  Our boys sang in the streets, unbuttoned their shirt collars, laughed and shouted, and forgot to salute.  A lot of Algerians misinterpreted this as inefficiency.  They thought such a carefree army couldn’t possibly whip the grim Germans.

Most of the minor peoples of the world expect discipline.  They admire strict rulers because to theme strictness is synonymous with strength.  The Algerians couldn’t conceive of the fact that our strength lay in our freedom.

Out of it all I gathered a new respect for Americans, sloppy though we might be.  They may call us Uncle Shylock, but I know of no country on earth that actually is less grabby.  In all my traveling both before and during the war I was frequently revolted by the shriveled greediness of soul that inhabits so much of the world.  The more I saw of us Americans and British, the more I liked us.  And although Germany was our bitter enemy, at least the Germans seemed to have the character to be wholly loyal to their own country.