LETTERS FROM FRANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 September 1941, Page 3

LETTERS FROM FRANCE

STORIES OF NAZI TYRANNY. HATRED OF THE INVADER. The 8.8. C. on June 27 broadcast a number of letters it had received from listeners in France. Each letter told the same tale of Nazi cruelty and breathed the same hatred of the invader. The letters came from all parts, from occupied as well as unoccupied France. Some from sorely tried ports where our raids have been heavy appealed to the R.A.F. to bomb again and again, so long as it helped to rid France of the enemy. Two points were made most evident by these letters. The first was that there never could be collaboration with the Nazis. The second, that the French radio does not represent France in any way and is merely the tool of the Germans, served by a few poor wretches entirely in their clutches. The Press is, of course, so entirely under the Germans or Darlan which amounts to the same thing, that a real French Press is today inexistent. The way in which many of the writers appealed to their British friends not to think for a moment that the radio reflected French opinion was pathetic. It was refreshing to hear these affirmations from the French people themselves given out' by a body of such known integrity and impartiality as the 8.8. C. They must have convinced anyone who might doubt that the heart of the real French people is in the right place. “Land but 2.000,’’ said one letter, “and by the morrow you will be 200,000.” It was also clear that throughout France there is a realisation of the ignoble role played by Admiral Darlan. Marshal Petain, as is well known, enjoys a very large amount of popularity, but it is known to every Frenchman that he is but a tool in the hands of Darlan and others. Darlan's treachery is so well understood. that a neutral recently in France reports that the walls of the big Renault factory in the suburbs of Paris were one morning found covered with the inscription in scores of places, “French Admirals will soon be wearing prison clothes." The tormenting “V” (Victory) campaign grows in intensity, and not only is the letter found scribbled everywhere, but the three dots and a dash that form, the "V” in Morse are rapped cut on cafe tables, whistled, hummed, sung, repeated in a hundred ways. Often a German soldier alighting from the Paris underground leaves the train with a “V” chalked on his back, sometimes his uniform lacerated by a sharp razor blade in two cuts forming the letter hated by the German but full of hope for the French.