Maquis Historian

Dininutive Edward Perroy, Exchange Professor of History, concedes he is "typically French." The 51-year-old mustacheoed historian looks so much like a scholar that few can believe that he was also a French underground leader in World War H, and "enjoyed it tremendously."

Perroy is here from the Sorbonne to teach mediaeval French history. Otherwise the dapper little man, habitually dressed in dark double-breasted suits, buries himself behind the stacks in his fourth floor Widener office or chats with his Leverett House mates.

He terms his subject --mediaeval history--a "kind of no man's land" that students often skip. Europeans don't have the American passion for breaking down history into blocks by country and era: "We don't study French history; we study history." Not used to general survey courses, Perroy is having considerable trouble compressing the whole Carolingian Empire into three weeks.

After graduating from the Sorbonne in 1924, he lectured in Belgium and Holland, taught ten years in Great Britain (hence his excellent command of English), and fifteen years at the University of Lille.

During the war, Perroy continued his work at the Sorbonne, while doing "odd jobs" for the underground on the side. When the Petain government tried to press French students into forced labor in Germany, Perroy helped spirit them off to the Maquis. His success prompted the Germans into an investigation and Perroy had to "disappear" to Lyons, where he took over direction of all underground activities in that district.

Blowing up bridges? "That was easy. The only trouble was that I had to make the rounds of my district and the wrecked bridges forced me to cycle perhaps seventy extra miles to do it." He regrets only that "the trials and executions (set up by the Maquis to take care of collaborators) were not more thorough where they could have done much good.

A socialist, and perhaps an extreme one, he is rather nationalistic on the subject of France. In his first Harvard lecture, he reportedly told the class they could read "Cambridge Mediaeval History," but added "That's no good; read the French Book instead."

Perroy is trying bachelor life again--briefly--during his stay in Cambridge. He has left his wife in Paris to with his 20-year-old daughter, an art student. Judging only on three weeks he thinks Leverett may "look more like grown-up boys, physically speaking, but intellectually they are very mature." He completely approves the free boy-girl relationships here as any typically French man should (at French universities girls out-number boys): "After all there is no means to exert supervision on what they are doing; it is none of my business how they mix outside the lecture room." DAVID C. D. ROGERS