ORDERS FROM RUSSIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26636, 5 December 1947, Page 5

ORDERS FROM RUSSIA

Communist Attempt to Cripple France

MINISTER’S ACCUSATIONS

Rec. 10 p.m. LONDON, Dec. 4. The Socialist Minister of the Interior, M. Jules Moch, in the French National Assembly last night, accused the Communists of “ acting on an international order to wreck the Marshall plan.”

While M. Moch was speaking, strong pickets of mobile guards, with rifles and machine guns, and steel-helmeted police patrolled the streets and bridges within a three-quarter-mile radius of the Assembly. M. Moch said the Communists were trying to cripple France with the strikes they had fomented, and declared that their orders came from Moscow.

. >- v When M. Maurice Thorez, the secretary-general of the French Communist Party, laughed at this statement, M. Moch retorted: “M. Thorez but he knows this better than I do, because he has just come from Moscow.”

Throughout M. Moch’s speech, Communist deputies banged their desk tops and shouted. At one point a flight reputy yelled back: “What you need are straight-jackets.” M. Moch declared that there was a general tendency to resume work and more strikers would have returned had it not been for repeated acts of sabotage, which M. Moch said were continuing as he spoke.

The Paris correspondent of the Daily Mail says there is little doubt that the men who are trying to cripple the nation’s vital services are experts and there are enough of them to operate simultaneously in widely-separated areas. Generally, the correspondent adds, their methods are similar to those used by saboteurs of the Maquis during the war and in some cases, materials dropped to the Maquis during the occupation have been used.

The Assembly adopted the Government's Anti-sabotage Bill by 413 votes to 183 after a stormy debate. Only the Communists voted against it. The Communist sabotage campaign, including widespread railway derailments, has grown into' guerilla warfare against the Government, says Reuter’s correspondent. A Government spokesman said that 80,000 fresh reservists being called up under the Anti-sabotage Bill will mainly be used to. guard, the'railways. It is considered that the general strike attempt has failed but the Government versus the Communist struggle is expected to last several more days. General de Gaulle has reached Paris from his country home. The Independent Conservative newspaper Le Monde said that the people’s resistance everywhere was hardening against the promoters of • a disguised civil war. ' ,t The Associated Press correspondent says the latest railway sabotage includes rails unbolted near Etampes. Meun, Epone, Le Mans, Livron, Sarrebourg, and on the Lyons-Grenoble line 200 yards of double track was ripped up near Etampes and a goods train was derailed. There have been 26 railway sabotage incidents in a week Other violent acts included the seizure of public buildings, railway stations andf factories.

The police .used tear gas and truncheons to break up mass demonstrations at Toulouse, Marseilles, Rouen, Amiens, Vierzon, Bourges, Montlucon, and Rennes. In Paris,, pillarboxes have been smashed and letters thrown into the gutters. Strikers tried to force their way. into the telephone exchange but the police turned them back. Sabotage cost 20 lives yesterday, when a mail train' travelling from Paris to Arras, at high speed was wrecked on the line, which had been severed by a saboteur near Arras. Forty persons were injured. There were no serious casualties in four other derailments. The ParisRouen mail train left the rails soon after leaving the capital. Several sleeper bolts had been removed. The Paris-Orleans mail train was derailed near Marolles. Several carriages turned over, ’and three of the four lines were blocked. A passenger train from Calais to. Dunkirk was derailed about five miles from Gravelines. Saboteurs unriveted rails and derailed a train carrying 25 passengers on the district line between Avignon and Livron. in southern France.

The Minister of Transport, M. Pineau, told the National Assembly that there was absolutely ho doubt that saboteurs derailed the mail train near Arras. They unscrewed two rails from the line. M. Pineau added that sabotage was increasing every day Three railwaymen were among those arrested.

Strikers took possession of Juvisy railway station, south of Paris, and stopped all traffic until the police, after two hours, cleared them from the station.

Before the police arrived at Juvisy station crowds waiting for trains took matters into their own hands and attacked the strikers, who retreated battered and bleeding. The police are clearing strikers from Paris factories. Three detachments of mobile guards ejected pickets from the Lille metal works, where about 3000 of 45,000 workers returned to work The workers in about 2000 Paris flourmills, resumed after a stoppage of more than three weeks.