BRITONS IN FRANCE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 205, 28 August 1940, Page 2

BRITONS IN FRANCE

UNTOLD SUFFERING HARRIED BY GESTAPO Biitons in occupied France are suffering greatly. Many of them at present at Marseilles are practically destitute and are unable to appeal to the British Consulate, which no longer exists. They have no money to buy Spanish or Portuguese visas, and they are continually harried by the German Gestapo, or secret police. An escaped Britisli soldier who has arrived at Lisbon (Portugal) says that he saw 30 Britons, all hungry and sleeping on the stone floor of a sailors' refuge in Marseilles. He prophesied worse conditions for them, as all their mones* must by now be exhausted, and food is scarcer and dearer. The soldier was first taken prisoner at Abbeville, He escaped, but after taking a fortnight on the journey to the coast, he was again taken prisoner at Staples. He again escaped to Marseilles by way of Paris, but was unable to get money from the British, authorities. He tried to beg food, and for 10 days slept in cellars on the verge of starvation. Eventually, he borrowed sufficient money to buy a Portuguese visa. The soldier said that the Germans treated prisoners well, but that the food was -inadequate. The Germans tried to arouse hostility between British and French prisoners. He also reportecS that all ranks of German soldiers he had met enthusiastically supported Hitler, mainly through personal rather than party loyalty. He found individual soldiers unanimously anti-British. Mr Churchill and the "capitalist class" were tlie chief objects of hatred. The authorities in Britain hope that arrangements may be completed whereby the American authorities at Marseilles will finance bona fidie British subjects.