POPULAR FRONT IN FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 263, 5 August 1942, Page 5

POPULAR FRONT IN FRANCE

Preparing Uprising EAGER PEOPLE, COOL LEADERSHIP

Organizer’s Discl.osures (By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright.)

(Received August 4, 7 p.m.)

LONDON, August 3

“ ‘Powder trains’ which have been laid in France for the greatest explosion since the French Revolution link up from city to city and from village to village, and an intricate pattern of conspiracy has been coolly and carefully prepared,” says the “Daily Express.” “L’heure H—the zero hour for national uprising—will strike on the day the British go back to France.”

The correspondent says that M. Andrew Philip, the Socialist and former deputy who reached London from France recently, has “placed the master-fuse in General de Gaulle’s hand.” M. Philip has been appointed Commissioner for the Interior and for Labour in the de Gaulle Cabinet. He came to London to take up the post, which is tantamount to General de Gaulle’s chief of staff to the civilian army in France. Mi Philip journeyed throughout France, securing for General de Gaulle the allegiance of every fighting party and unifying scattered centres of resistance, the correspondent continues. The rival leaders met and agreed on a common programme, and the discipline has been improved where the resistance was spontaneous and anarchical. Nazi Provocation. M. Philip, who is one of France’s foremost Socialists and a Protestant, paid a glowing tribute to the loyalty and courage of the French Communists. “They are magnificent. They have the posts of greatest danger because Communists are immediately shot if discovered,” he said. “The Socialists, Syndicalists, Conservatives, and Communists are forming militant groups in all towns and cities. The vast mass of the people support this new Popular Front, and the difficulty is not in raising the fighting spirit but in holding it in check.”

M. Philip added that the Germans are doing their utmost to provoke a premature revolt and thus discover the leaders. They know that when “der Tag” comes there will arise a great army of men and women to kill, and sabotage and blast open for the Allies the road to Germany. “The new France does not wish to accept liberation from the British andfAmericans. It wants to win it,” M. Philip said.