FRENCH POLICY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 May 1941, Page 6

FRENCH POLICY

COMMENTS BY MR EDEN WHAT “COLLABORATION” MEANS. BETRAYAL OF NATIONAL TRADITIONS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day. 11.27 a.m.) RUGBY. May 14. Questioned in the House of Commons regarding French Government policy, the Foreign Secretary (Mr Eden) answered: “The policy which has been adopted and declared by France is collaboration with Germany within certain limits, which have not so far as I am aware been clearly defined. The agreement with Germany on May 5 provides, according to an official announcement issued at Vichy, for the alleviation of restrictive measures regarding the line of demarcation between occupied and unoccupied France and for a reduction in costs of occupation from 400 to 300 million francs daily. The line of demarcation would, according to a communique, be open generally for the passage of goods between the two zones and also for persons in case of the serious illness of near relatives. The despatch of plain postcards from one zone to the other would also be authorised and soldiers and airmen would be allowed to pass from one zone to the other under the conditions which hitherto have applied to sailors only. No official announcement has been made regarding what may have been conceded by France in return for these socalled concessions, but the agreement is described in Vichy as a new step along the path of collaboration. Whatever concessions Admiral Darlan may have agreed to, I find it hard to believe that the French people, helpless though they may be to prevent systematic German spoliation of their resources, will be so false to their noble traditions as to work actively of their own free will for the German cause, and thus prolong the period of their own sufferings and postpone the day of their own liberation."