POWER TO FIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 22, 26 July 1945, Page 7

POWER TO FIGHT

French Forces At The Armistice

EVIDENCE AT TRIAL

(By Teleoraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

Rec. 12.15 p.m. LONDON, July 25. France had better army equipment than was generally believed when the'war began., said M. Edouard Daladier, resuming his evidence at the trial of Marshal Petain. Before France was disarmed, he said, she had 3600 tanks, against 3200 possessed by the Germans, whose production was no greater than that of France. After the Armistice France had 3000 warplanes. There were 2200 warplanes in the free zones of France, and of. these 1200 were first-line craft.

"If only Petain had given the signal for an uprising in France on the day of the British and American landings in North Africa, what a glorious page in tne history of his life would have been written," he said. "Instead Petain ordered the troops in North Africa to resist the Allies.

"Petain not only killed the Republic but, did everything possible to dishonour it," he declared.

"We fought the war almost alone. Even the glorious Red Army was thrown off its feet at the beginning of the German tornado. If we had abandoned Poland in 1940 Germany might have had time to find 50 divisions she later lacked to take Moscow." Accusing Petain of having systematically taught out-of-date doctrines of strategy and neglecting to prepare the country for war as Vice-President of the Supreme War Council and as Mm