FRENCH YOUTH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 223, 19 September 1940, Page 12

FRENCH YOUTH.

WOMEN'S ATTITUDE.

RESOLVE TO HELP.

LONDON, Aug. 10. More than in any other war posterity ie likely to give thanks that in this one, youth showed its courage in the face of the most ruthless aggression the world has ever known.

Apart from the countless examples of heroi&m among the young men of the Fiench Army there were, and *re, the boye of France. British office™ returning to London have given glowing tribute to the work of the French boy scouts. Railway station* in France after th« Germans had entered Paris were frequently in a etate of utter chaos with their crowds of refugees, until a troop of boy scouts arrived to aid the besieged small etaffe. Theec boys even took over the station altogether, established an inquiry -bureau, reduced the eeethihg and anxious masses of people to eome sort of order and helped many of them to get away eventually by train.

It is of such stuff as this that the 150-odd French boye who escaped from France to England are made. These boys, ibetween the ages of 14 and Iβ for the most part, deliberately left their 6choole and homes when Petain'e Government came into power and made their way to the coast, searching for ships to take them to England. Worn out and with their clothes torn and bedraggled, hungry and thirsty when taken on board, but etill burning with enthusiasm, they came over here, eaye our London correspondent, in groups of sixes and eevene, landing from fishing smacks and trawlers.

"Please train us to fight and make France free again," they said. One 16-year-old said he had told his mother of his intention before starting off. She gave him her blessing and said, "I am glad; it is what your papa would want you to do." He went on a bicycle from Calais to Bordeaux, and when he could get no one to take him over from there he went on to St. where a fishing boat obliged.

Lady (Arthur) Peel, of the United Association of Great Britain and France, and the Boy Scout Association, have found uniforms for these young French heroes and set up a camp for them in north-west England. Teachers will see that their education goes on and the camp will be under the care of British Army officers.

Practical encouragement to French youth to take Hβ stand by Britain nas also been given to young refugees by the Societe d'Entre-Aide dee Enfants de France, under Mrs. Crawshay, who has found new clothes for them and sew shoes for the willing little feet that 'sometimes had torn ones and sometimes none at all to cover the tears and scratches of many weary French miles. The Vicom-teeee de la Panouse, too, is busy collecting clothes at her London house, in addition to her work for the 5000 wounded French soldiers now in this country.

Many young women of France now in Britain have written to. Mr. Winston Churchill and. to General de Gaulle, saying that they want to play their part in the struggle that is coming. "Already many of us have experienced the loss of nearly everybody and everything we hold dear. Nevertheless our resolve is unshakable to work at all times and in all ways to help England to win the struggle for freedom, in the result of which, under your leadership, we have supreme confidence," a group of them wrote to Mr. Churchill recently.

Much will be heard of Young France in the.days ahead of us. Totalitarianism has yet to reckon with it.