Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1940. THE FUTURE OF FRANCE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 November 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1940. THE FUTURE OF FRANCE.

ACCORDING 1o a cablegram received a day or two ago, it is authoritatively stated in London that “there are indications that the power of the British Navy will encourage certain elements in France, and especially in the French colonies, to resist the German terms for collaboration.’’ An American correspondent in Europe went even further in declaring that France was standing firm against the German proposals “tor collaboration for European peace” and that stories of France having agreed to co-operate with Germany in naval and other action against Britain, are untrue. It must be hoped, that grounds exist for these statements, but France remains for time being under the ostensible control, of men who are visibly leading her to destruction. This applies equally to the aged Marshal Petain, with his pathetic ' talk of honour, and to the sinister Laval. Excluding deliberate treason, senility alone will account, for some of the statements reported to have been made lately by Marshal Petain —such statements, for example, as: — I entered the road of collaboration with honour in order to maintain French unity within the framework of the new European order. I met Hitler of my own free will and was not under any dictation or pressure from him. We discussed collaboration. The method of application will be announced later. Collaboration must be sincere. Although aggression must be excluded. . France has numerous obligations to the victor. France’s sovereignty imposes an obligation to defend her soil. Follow me and keep trust in eternal France. These disjointed words are spoken in advocacy of slavish submission to a gangster dictatorship which is sworn to destroy France. In “Alein Kampf” Hitler spoke of France as being completely under the control of Jewish financiers and the prey of a constant inflow of negroes, interbreeding with the French population. This, he said, was the work of the Jews, who strove for the formation of a Mulatto State, stretching from the Congo to the Rhine, with a view to bastardising the rest of white Europe from this basis. In the annihilation of France (Hitler declared) Germany secs merely the means for our nation to obtain full development in another direction. ... This is the man, now the triumphant conqueror of France, whom Marsha] Petain says he has met in honour and “of my own free will,” and with whom he has agreed on principles of “collaboration.” Whatever his degree of responsibility may he, it must be plain to all the world that in his present policy Marshal Petain, is dishonouring his country and betraying it into ever-deepening misfortune by delivering it into the hands of its deadliest enemies. What “collaboration” between France and Germany would mean probably is best indicated by the observation of an. American. journalist who is reported to have interviewed the French Vice-Premier and who said he had received the definite impression that M. Laval desired the defeat of Britain as a corollary to Franco-German collaboration?’ Difficult as it is to imagine such a state of delusion, it may be that Marshal Petain and certain of his Vichy colleagues believe that submission to Germany is compatible with some sort of safeguarded and even honest neutrality for France, but there can be no question of making even this poor measure of excuse for Laval and his kind. These men quite obviously are intent deliberately on betraying their own country, as well as of doing all the harm they can to Britain. It must be supposed that their personal hopes are set upon the attainment of some sori of subordinate, slave-driving status under Nazi overlordship. Hope for the future of France plainly rests upon the extent to which the total Vichy regime, and not merely its active wing headed by Laval, is discarded and repudiated by the French people. In every detail, the miserable policy of servile truckling to the Nazis is a base betrayal of France. It has done nothing whatever to relieve the nation of a single detail of oppression or exploitation. If the mon of Vichy had been intent on plunging their country into the ultimate depths of. calamity they could not better have pursued that aim than in the course they have adopted. If they had had their way. the whole French Navy and Air Force would have been at'lhe enemy’s disposal. They have gone as far as they could, too, towards making the French African colonies an asset in the hands of the Nazis. Il must be hoped that in these colonies particularly, a simple contemplation of the facts will induce Frenchmen io lake, in the extent Io which it is still practicable, the action that so obviously is needed to make an end of the betraval of France.