EXPANDING APACE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 December 1940, Page 5

EXPANDING APACE

SABOTAGE IN FRENCH ARMS FACTORIES IN SPITE OF GERMAN TERRORISM. THOUSANDS OF COMMUNISTS ARRESTED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, December 2. An account of how French workers are risking death by sabotaging German aircraft factories in France is given by the “Daily Mail,” which publishes a story written by a Frenchman who has reached England. He says that sabotage is rapidly increasing at the Citroen, Gnome, Renault, and other factories where Germans are bribing or threatening certain Frenchmen to mingle with the workers and report the most outspoken of them. These are picked out and shot. Eight Citroen employees thus became victims in October. Of 20 fighter planes made at the Parisian factory and tried out by the Germans three crashed, two of the pilots being killed. The Germans then tried to counteract sabotage by using French pilots,, but this ceased because the Germans feared that the planes would be flown to England. The article gives details of numerous incidents illustrating the French hatred of the Germans. German soldiers are ordered to keep together when out sight-seeing. This is done for their own protection. Communist cells are active in Lyons, and hundreds of French in key positions in the police and administrative offices are doing their utmost to hinder the Germans and to assist escaped prisoners. Wherever possible, the French are assisting British prisoners. The “Daily Telegraph” states that hundreds and perhaps thousands of Communists have been arrested in France as a result of a recrudescence of Communist propaganda. They include M. Louis Thorez, brother" of M. Maurice Thorez, general secretary of the French Communist Party, who disappeared to avoid arrest at the time of the Daladier ' anti-Communist decrees in 1939.