Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 1941. FRANCE AND THE BLOCKADE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 March 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 1941. FRANCE AND THE BLOCKADE

yY STATEMENT by the French Ambassador to the United

States, Al. Henry Haye, which was reported in a cablegram yesterday, might be taken to mean that Britain, at America's instance, is about to allow large quantities of food to enter unoccupied France for the use of the general population. It is quite certain that Britain has no intention of doing anything of the kind and that she will not be asked by the American Government to relax the blockade in favour of France to the extent suggested by Al. Haye. No one has emphasised more clearly than President Roosevelt the necessity of ensuring that any supplies sent to France reach and benefit only those for whom thev are intended.

What has been agreed upon meantime is that foodstuffs for children in unoccupied France, including vitamin concentrates and dried milk, and items of clothing, shall be admitted through the blockade in strictly limited quantities under the control of the American Red Cross organisation. At the .Ministry of Economic Warfare in London it was stated recently that this decision

in no way alters Britain’s policy of blockading unoccupied France. The fact that the administration of these necessities to children is being undertaken by the American Red Cross Society is sufficient guarantee for the British Government. The goods will go to an agreed destination in unoccupied France and will be dealt with under the personal supervision of the society.

This leaves untouched the larger question raised not long ago in an aggressive fashion by Admiral Darlan, Vice-Premier in the Vichy Ministry, when he threatened to convoy and protect ships carrying food to France.

It has been said justly that the only question open with regard to this threat is whether it was made solely under German pressure or implies a readiness on the part of the Vichy Government to become a party to a German intrigue. It is the whole answer to Admiral Darlan’s threat and to his preposterous assertion-that (in the. matter of French food supplies) “the Germans have proved more generous and more humanitarian than the British,” that the French people are menaced with starvation only because of the German invasion and German plundering, and that, as a British representative observed the other day: “There can never be an end of suffering and starvation in Europe without the complete annihilation of the Nazi system.”

All the essential facts are on indisputable record and it is well established that whatever food shortages exist in France are the result of German robberies, the situation of course being accentuated by the disorganisation of industry and transport in occupied and unoccupied France for which also Germany is wholly responsible. It is abundantly dear that if by some miracle French naval forces were able to break the British blockade, the food situation in France would not be improved in the slightest degree. - All that would happen would be that Germany would be enabled to enlarge the scale of her looting in France.

France cannot escape from her present bondage and calamities in any other way than by the victory of Britain and her allies and the overthrow and destruction of Nazism. That being so, it is clear that if he were permitted to carry out his threat, Admiral Darlan would not be serving or helping France, but would be doing something to help the Nazis to make France permanently their bond-slave.

The vital question involved in an admittedly critical situation is whether Admiral Darlan has any idea of carrying out his threat and whether he would be permitted by his Vichy colleagues to do so. On what is known of his character and reputation it seems improbable that Admiral Darlan will voluntarily sink to the ignoble depth of making common cause with the Nazis against Britain, though that precisely is what his recently reported threat implies. Of the attitude of the French Vice-Premier, the former Paris correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” wrote not long ago:—

Admiral Darlan, who has played a prominent part in the latest negotiations with the Germans since the fall of Laval, is no friend of ours; but he is certainly not, like Laval, a devoted partisan of the “new order” and he has the interests of his Navy at heart. In no circumstances is he likely to regard the transfer of the Navy to Axis control as being in its “interests.” It was he who is believed to have insisted upon the rejection of the Hitler “peace terms,” which, if accepted, would in his view have involved France in war with Great Britain.

This estimate of Admiral Darlan would be demonstrated to be completely erroneous should he proceed to give effect to his latest. threat by endeavouring forcibly to break the British blockade. Tn that event he would plainly have become, whether under compulsion or voluntarily, an instrument of Nazi policy and the enemy of his own country as well as of Britain. With the question in suspense, it is hardly reassuring that the admiral’s name is included with those of Lava], Deal, Frot, and Marquet on the sticker labels denouncing them as traitors which have been posted throughout Paris.