"DID HIS DUTY TO FRANCE"

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 40, 16 January 1945, Page 3

"DID HIS DUTY TO FRANCE"

CARPENTIER'S DEFENCE

COLLABORATION WITH

GERMANS?

Georges. ox-box trig champion and pre-war music liall idol of Paris, has written a letter to the British' public defending himself against charges that he collaborated with the. Germans, states an English exchange. In it who is f rec Paris say&: "It' appears that in London I am believed to be a collaborator, and that there are certain London papers which have printed this as the truth. "Nobody can have any doubts as to my sentiments towards the Boclie —it can be put in one word, 'hate.' Because I am a man of the north,, a man whose country has been- twice in 25 years devastated, martyred, and rained by the Boche. "It is intolerable to me that mj English friends doubted me for one moment,," Carpentier goes on to say that, one of the bars he ran,, the Ssun James was the meeting place for members of the Resistance Move ment. . "I will not tell you all the things [> did to aid the patriots," Carpentier states. "It was my duty." He explains why he was suspec - ed of collaborating. "Three times I refused to go to Berlin; the fourth time I had to gootherwise I would have been sent to prison. "I was only away three days, ineluding travelling. In Boriln I retereed a boxing match between French boxers, staged for the benefit of French workers there. "The second reason was when I met Schmelling. My great friend C. W. Herring threw a party for me on my 50th birthday, and I specified I would go if Frenchmen only were invited. Schmelling and two or three other Germans came in uninvited. 1 "I was going to give an exhibition bout, but Schmelling came up into the ring and-embraced me. Two Nazi photographers took a photograph which eventually appeared in the English preps. "[ could not give Schmelling a straight left: I would have been shot. 1 " Friends of Carpentier in London told me that underneath the Lido, another bar under his management, machine guns were stored by the Resistance Movement.