ENIGMA OF SYRIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 3

ENIGMA OF SYRIA

WHY WERE BRITISH FORCES OPPOSED. MYSTERY TO MANY FRENCH PEOPLE. Why the French in Syria held out against our forces, the forces of the only country in Europe that will ever help France to save herself, is as much a mystery to the Frenchman one meets in England as it is to us. Talks with many well-known French people now on the British side of the Channel have failed to produce an explanation. The resistance is one of those happenings that defy understanding. Every Frenchman who has escaped from France is convinced that no French soldier can possible have any love for the Germans or wish to collaborate with them.

Nevertheless, in an endeavour to find some explanation the following considerations have been advanced by French people in What, these French people point out, we and they have perhaps too readily forgotten is that Petain is popular in that he represents, in the bewildering avalanche that has swept France off her feet, something to hold to. Propaganda has not been able to bring home to French soldiers in a distant land what is known elsewhere, namely, that Petain is an old man being used by an unscrupulous set around him working for their own ends.

Then, too, there is the purely military point of view. While the citizen may reason and argue, the soldier musf, obey. What is attacked he defends. His not to reason why. Frenchmen in Britain declare the soldier in Syria would havfe fought as stubbornly against German soldiers landing on Syrian aerodromes, if it is admitted certain Vichy officers would not have promptly stayed his hand.

It is indeed a tragedy when the drowning man strikes at his rescuer — but perhaps allied propaganda has not quite measured up to its task, and Iraq is a painful recent memory.