FRENCH PEOPLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 October 1941, Page 6

FRENCH PEOPLE

WHAT MAJORITY BELIEVE. FEELING TOWARDS NAZIS AND OTHERS. The following letter from Paris, reproduced by the courtesy of the 8.8. C., is one of the most reasoned attempts to enable- the person outside France to understand what is really thought by those inside the country overrun by the Nazis. The writer has made an effort to answer just those questions he imagines the foreigner must be asking He writes: ‘•The Germans are not mere looters; they clean up everything, lock, stock and barrel. "Under the semblance of. virtue, their regime is a fine example of economic bungling and corruption, and at the same time of the spirit of vengeance, but a vengeance that is cold and systematic. That spirit rules out any spirit of reconciliation in Europe in the future. “There is no hope in anything as long as the Germans are here. “The British blockade has a broad back and can be blamed for anything. “Europe had enough to live on, and France above all, before the Nazi regime set about destroying the established economic order. “The State control of transport and the distribution of essential commodities, in breaking the usual commercial circuits, fragile as they were, above all assists the end of facilitating the enormous levies made by Germany. “Industrialisation, centralisation, State control of production are measures that profit no one but the Germans. “Now that the black market has been suppressed one notices that no more goods appear in the legal market. “In face of tyranny (above all foreign tyranny) fraud becomes the most sacred of duties. “Petain is a fine old man, above all when he said ‘No’ t(j> the Boche. “The English are ' egotists who did not see clearly, but they are a great people and they will yet avenge our sufferings. “The British can demolish Dakar, Marseilles and even Vichy. We will welcome them all the same, for they come to deliver us. “Their in the towns of the coast are received with regular’ renewal of hate —against the Germans. “The National-Socialist regime is . a regime of misery for all. The real secret condition of Germany and Italy is proof of it.” The writer declares the foregoing to be “what 95 per cent of French people in the occupied zone, whatever their class, are agreed upon.”