FREE FRENCH

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 120, 23 May 1942, Page 5

FREE FRENCH

LEADER ARRIVES

NEW CALEDONIA GOVERNOR

Called to General de Gaulle's headquarters in London, the Governor of New Caledonia, M. Henri Sautot, has arrived in New Zealand. He was the first of the French colonial administrators to raise the standard of Free France, and his long experience of Frencn colonial affairs will be very valuable in London. He is accompanied by Lieutenant de Vaisseau F. Fourlinnie and Paymaster Sub-Lieutenant Albert Renard, A.D.C.

M. Sautot has not visited New Zealand before, although he has met the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, elsewhere. He hopes to talk with him before continuing his journey.

When France capitulated M. Sautot was in the New Hebrides, and he immediately declared for General da Gaulle. On July 16, 1940, he went to Noumea, where three days later, after a conference with the actingGovernor, he assumed the chief administrative post under de Gaulle. Some French residents left New Caledonia in a French ship, but it is believed that they did not get further than lndo-China on their way back to France.

Sergeant Sautot, son of M. Sautot, has seen service in Africa and the Near East. The Free French forces, of all arms, have been strongly reinforced from the possessions of the Republic in Oceania, and they have already suffered a number of casualties in action.

M. Sautot, who was born in Champagne, joined the French coioniai Bervice in 1908. For 20 years he was stationed in West Africa, and for a time he was acting-Governor of St. Pierre, an island group off the coast of Newfoundland. vVhile in the Pacific he was successively the chief representative of the republic in Taniti, the New Hebrides and New Caledonia.