HATRED IN FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 20, 19 October 1942, Page 5

HATRED IN FRANCE

Danger Of Wholesale Vengeance (Received October 18, 8 p.m.) NEW YORK, October 17. The Now York “Herald-Tribune’s” Washington correspondent says that every town in France has completed blacklists of persons who will be killed on the day of France’s liberation, and 1,000,000 Frenchmen will be. slaughtered unless preventive action is taken, according to M. Andre Philip, the ’Commissioner of the Interior with the French National Committee. He said he believed that civil war could be averted only if General de Gaulle makes a direct personal appeal to tho French people to refrain from private vengeance when United Nations forces land in France. ALLIED AGREEMENT Punishment Of Axis War Criminals

LONDON, October 15.

It is stated in London -that the Soviet declaration signed by M. Molotov on the punishment of war criminals shows complete agreement with the objectives the British Government had in mind in the statement made by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Simon, in the House of Lords on October 7. As regards Herr Rudolf Hess, the deputv-Fuehrer. who flew to Britain last year, he is one of the leaders who may be regarded as covered by the statement made by the Foreign Under-Secretary, Mr. Law, in the House of Commons yesterday. A sentence in M. Molotov’s announcement is iuternreted by news agencies as advocating the immediate trial and punishment of Hess. . The sentence reads: “The Soviet considers it is essential to hand over without delay to a special international tribunal, and to punish with all the severity of the criminal code, any leader of Fascist Germany, who, in the course of war, has fallen into the hands of the States fighting against Germany.” The American Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Sumner Welles, said it was gratifying to know that Russia had agreed that war criminals should be punished. He declined to comment on the proposal to try Hess immediately. Military Prisoner.

It is authoritatively stated in London that Hess is a military prisoner of war, not a prisoner of State. The “Izvestia” (Moscow Government organ) says today, “There is no reason to postpone till the end of the war the punishment of the Hitlerite chieftains who have fallen or will fall into the hands of the United Nations. The world- cannot and must not delay their punishment.”