NAZIS PLUNDER EUROPE

Southland Times, Issue 24242, 27 September 1940, Page 6

NAZIS PLUNDER EUROPE

DISCONTENT HIGH IN FRANCE RUGBY, September 24. The new rationing regulations have dismayed the French population, which was unaware that conditions were so critical, states the French frontier correspondent of The Times. The average Frenchman considers 100 grammes of rice monthly for children and 100 grammes of fat and 100 grammes of cheese far below the safe minimum, while 125 grammes of soap a head each month is believed to be dangerous to health. France must deliver to the German army of occupation all the army’s bread and part of its meat requirements.

Discontent is very high in the towns, where the severity of the rationing has increased the unpopularity of Marshal Petain’s Government, of which M. Pierre Laval is the chief executive. The Government, as a precautionary measure, has withdrawn the civil government from five of the chief towns of unoccupied France. The wine growers of France face a tremendous problem in the disposal of their produce. The usual markets are, of course, barred to them and to the others which might be available transport is impossible. All available rolling stock has been commandeered by the Germans for the transport of petrol, making more difficult a problem already described as immense by M. Pietri, French Minister of Communications. But France in some ways is not suffering as heavily as Norway. For each head of population, Norway is paying more for the cost of occupation than is France, who has to meet levies 90 times as severe as those imposed on Germany- in 1919. The German plundering of the enslaved States goes on steadily. The ration of coffee and soap has been increased in Germany, but in Norway the ration of coffee has been decreased by a quarter, the soap ration has been reduced, flour supplies have been cut down and there is less pastry. The Germans have found it necessary to tighten their control in many ways. All police functions have been taken over by the army of occupation and the conduct of foreign affairs is now openly in the province of the German High Command.

There exists in Germany itself an acute shortage of rubber, so acute that a decree has been issued forbidding the use of bicycles unless long distances have to be covered. The use of bicycles by school children has been forbidden until the end of the war. Fuel is another problem, so great a problem that janitors who stoke fires in Berlin have to atend a special course to ensure the maximum value from every ounce of fuel. School boys have been forbidden to collect horse chestnuts, which must be used as fodder.

Norway is in future to be governed by a Council of Nine, of whom Major Vidkun Quisling is reported to be one. King Haakon is no longer recognized as chief of the Norwegian State and Parliament is abolished.