BETRAYAL OF FRANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 September 1941, Page 5

BETRAYAL OF FRANCE

WHAT “COLLABORATION” MEANS IN ECONOMIC ASPECTS. SLAVERY TO THE NAZIS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 18. Expert consideration of France’s status in Hitler's “new order” is given by M. Herve Alphand, who until recently was financial attache at the Vichy Embassy at Washington. In his letter of resignation, sent to the Vichy Ambassador, M .Alphand, who previously held the position of director of commercial agreements at the Ministry of Commerce, states: — “I am convinced that economically France would be a vassal of Germany, The northern regions, joined to Belgium, would furnish the Reich with high-quality industrial commodities. They would receive in exchange, through European clearing States, food products. But, following the method experienced by the Balkans before the war and by France since then, the rate of exchange would be so fixed that, having given much, we should receive very little, and the standard of living would be reduced to a strict minimum. Germany would swamp the world with this cheaply acquired merchandise, forcing out all her former competitors and thus procuring for herself the raw materials which she needs.

“Alongside the industrial slaves, the agricultural slaves of central and southern France would furnish, by an analogous financial mechanism, staple foods, the quota of which would be fixed by the Reich. Needless to say, the manufacture of luxury articles would be permitted only under German control. The former French colonies would be exploited by a tripartite organisation of Germans, Italians and Frenchmen, in which we should consequently become a minority.

“Practical operation of this system is currently being studied by the Bureau of Economic Organisation of the Reich, with headquarters at Brussels. A country which would thus be dominated economically could not be politically independent. Every Frenchman would become nothing more than a human machine, functioning for the sole satisfaction of German needs. That is what Hitler, in his sinister manner, calls ‘the new European order.’ ”

M. Alphand states that it is certainly to Hitler’s advantage for the time being to present a conciliatory attitude toward France, and he asks whether the chief of the German Army, “confronted with the possibility of destroying the hereditary foe that we are,” will let the occasion pass by. M. Alphand is now in Britain, where he has joined the Free French organisation.