ALL SOULS DAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 December 1941, Page 4

ALL SOULS DAY

FRENCH IN LONDON PRAY FOR HOSTAGES. A TOUCHING CEREMONY. A tricolour flag thrown over a catafalque surrounded by candles whose light shone on the stern, sad faces and glittering bayonets of Free French soldiers mounting guard, was the centre of the dimly lit church of St James, London, on November 3, where French men and women gathered to pray for their dead and for the repose of the soul of the hostages done to death in France.

Britain associated itself with their sorrow. Mr Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Mr Brendan Bracken, Minister of Information, attended on behalf of the British Government.

Mass for the dead was conducted by a chaplain of the Free French forces in an atmosphere that was heavy with suppressed emotion. Here, a hasty cough, there a womap silently weeping. One has to have lived in France to know what All Souls Day means to the French, the day when every cemetery is thronged, when relations decorate the tombs of their loved ones and cover them with flowers. One felt within the narrow limits of this church the whole of France, for every one of those French people there in their mind was visiting a graveyard somewhere in France, their own motherland, so far away now, beneath the' heel of the Nazi invader. Each could see a sister, brother, a mother,. or father laying flowers on some grave somewhere and thinking of them in England. Here were the long roads of poplars of the north, of Artois and Flanders, where so many of our own British soldiers lie, and here the once fertile plain of the Beauce, with the cathedral of Chartres in the distance, the winding roads of Britanny, the silver Loire that meanders through the sweetest and gentlest of landscapes, the lands of the south where nature flings her mantle of flowers over every wall, the pine forests of the Landes, the villages whose windows star-like used to twinkle up among the foothills of the Pyrenees —one felt all that present in memory in the London church, fair land of France, home of these exiles. When the priest gave the absolution, a bugle tore the silence with the shrill notes of “Aux Champs,” the. guard of honour presenting arms, while General de Gaulle raised his hand to the salute. Another French chaplain, this time of the Free French fleet, preached the sermon, “The spirit of sacrifice,” and spoke in impassioned tones of those who had not hesitated to give their lives for their country. But as he spoke one felt the rebirth of hope. To the notes of Chopin’s Funeral March the crowd filed out of the building. When General de Gaulle appeared outside the church, the cry was taken up from mouth to mouth, rapid, staccato, determined, “Vive la France,” followed by “Vive I’Angleterre” as the British Ministers took their leave.

With General de Gaulle were also presefit Admiral Muselier, commander of the Free French Naval Forces, M. Dejean, Professor. Casin, M. Pleven, M. Diethelm and General Valin, members of the French National Committee.