NEW PATRIOTISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 December 1941, Page 4

NEW PATRIOTISM

RECENTLY BORN IN FRANCE. DEFEAT WISHED FOR AND WORKED FOR. “A new patriotism has been born in France,” says the writer of a letter to the 8.8. C. (published by “France”) sent on behalf of a group of listeners in the Dauphine. “This patriotism has nothing to do with the well regulated dummy demonstrations got up By the puppet government of Vichy; it is not by such harlequinades that national conscience can be awakened. '

“The patriotism I speak of is a deeper feeling, more real. The disaster that has befallen our country has revealed to us the truth which we had been too prone to forget, namely, that the community of. interests that binds all Frenchmen together, to whatever class they may belong, is superior to all often conflicting personal interests. ’

At the same time as this new birth has taken place, we have felt anger rising within us against all who had underhandedly prepared our defeat, for’the more we learn of the details the more we see that the defeat of our deal’ motherland was wished for and worked for by certain people. Who is it that could have had an interest in defeat if it were not those who expected to profit by the new state of things?” The writer of another letter to the 8.8. C., this time from Lorraine, says: —“We want no collaboration here. We are disgusted with Vichy and Petain at its head. The Vichy Government of cowards, a band of people who can only talk to us of penitence.” An enthusiastic listener writes from Perigord:—“Bravo! dear friends, you have just enabled us to live through minutes of magnificent enjoyment listening to your masterly, crushing replies to the speech of Petain. One after the other you smashed the arguments of the quavering voice that periodically comes on the air from Vichy to ask us to judge the progress made along the road of shame and degradation by the sinister team of Vichy. This writer refers, of course, to the broadcasts in French that go out from London. Competent Frenchmen, in these broadcasts, immediately reply to Petain’s speeches and expose his arguments, at the same time reminding the French people that collaboration with Germany means slavery and the end of France as an independent nation. In the hours of defeat and darkness, the 8.8. C. foreign language broadcasts, have brought light and hope to millions who have known that in this night of terrorism that hangs over Europe they are not alone and are not forgotten. .