HOUR OF HOPE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 December 1940, Page 3

HOUR OF HOPE

SEEN FOR THE FRENCH PEOPLE ANNOUNCEMENT BY GENERAL DE GAULLE. DRAMATIC DEMONSTRATION PLANNED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LOLNDON, December 23. General de Gaulle, leader of the Free French forces, today announced a dramatic demonstration planned by Frenchmen to protest against the German domination of their country. The protest is to be a silent one. For an hour, Frenchmen in both occupied and non-occupied France will stay behind closed doors. A statement issued by General de Gaulle says: “On January 1, from 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., in occupied France, and from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. in non-oc-cupied France, no Frenchmen will go about the streets of our towns and villages. Only the enemy will be there. During that hour of meditation our thoughts will be of deliverance. It will be an hour of hope."

TENSION EASED

VICHY AND THE NAZIS.

LONDON. December 24. Reports from Switzerland tonight say there is some lessening of the tension in Vichy about the negotiations with Germany after the handing over of the Vichy Cabinet’s reply to the latest German demands. Still nothing is known about the nature of the demands or the reply, but the lessening of the tension in Vnchy is reported by many correspondents. The determination of Marshal Petain to accept no political engagement going so far beyond the armistice terms as to deprive France of her Empire and her honour has been remarked upon during the last few days. The Vichy newspaper, “Le Journal,” in discussing the approaching arrival of Admiral Leahy, President Roosevelt’s new envoy to Marshal Petain, says that the Marshal probably saved .the future of France when he obtained the condition that she should retain her fleet and her empire. “This we iw ver forget, and we shall not forget it when we welcome the new American envoy. If French relations have varied according to the course of events, yet the two nations have never set themselves against each other and their consciences have always been in harmony.”