PETAIN GOVERNMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1940, Page 7

PETAIN GOVERNMENT

ACTING UNDER GERMAN ORDERS DELIBERATE DISTORTION OF FACTS. FALSE ACCOUNT OF ACTION AT ORAN. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, July 6. It is regarded in London as sadly significant that the account given at Vichy of the Oran action contains a deliberate distortion of the facts. The French statement alleges that Admiral Sir James Somerville’s ultimatum to Admiral Gensoul required him to join the British fleet or destroy his ships within six hours, and it makes no mention of the other alternatives offered by Britain and described by Mr Churchill in the House of Commons. It can thus be seen that the Petain Government already has been instructed by its new masters in the practice of suppression and distortion of the truth. It will be necessary to regard with suspicion all future utterances emanating from France, as from everywhere else where there is that Government’s influence or control. This new loss from the area of the world where a free Press still functions and truth is upheld and its obligations are officially respected lends special point in the view of commentators here to President Roosevelt’s selection of “freedom of information” as the second of five principles which he has enunciated as the necessary basis of a permanent peace.