PETAIN ACCUSED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 October 1941, Page 5

PETAIN ACCUSED

OF BEING HITLER’S SECRET WEAPON

ALLEGED BETRAYAL OF FRANCE.

INTRIGUES FOR SEVERAL YEARS.

LONDON, October 27,

Was Marshal Detain the secret weapon with which Hitler threatened France before the May, 3940, offensive? M. Maurice Dejean, General de Gaulle’s Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, asks this question in an article in the Free French newspaper, “France.” He was Chef de Cabinet for Foreign Affairs under Al. Daladier and M. Reyn and.

The article says that Marshal Petain, when Ambassador in Madrid in November, 1939, was the chief figure in organised activity for a separate peace with the Axis. Count de Brinon, the Vichy envoy to Paris, and M. Benoist Mechin (now Vichy Minister without portfolio) also participated. M. Dejean told M. Daladier, who said: “Aren’t you aware of Petain’s activities? I never sleep when he is in Paris.”

The article alleges that Marshal Petain’s intrigues with the Axis had been going on for several years under the directior of Commandant Lacau, Marshal Petain’s former chief of the military secret service. ’Lacau was arrested at the outbeak of the war on suspicion of pro-German activities, but was released at Marshal Petain’s demand. M. Dejeans adds: “I learned in Madrid after the armistice that Petain and Lacau were in constant relations with Laval after the autumn of 1939.” FRENCH INFORMERS COMMENDED BY NAZIS. PRAYERS IN LONDON FOR HOSTAGES. LONDON, October 26. The German commander in occupied* France, General Stuelpnagel, announced that some Frenchmen have given information and refused material reward and that therefore all their- relatives who are prisoners in Germany will be released and returned to France immediately. French men and women exiles and refugees prayed in the remains of a French church in London for the hundred hostages under sentence of death at Nantes and Bordeaux. Prayers are being offered daily.