THIRTY YEAR’S WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 December 1941, Page 4

THIRTY YEAR’S WAR

CONFLICT STARTED IN 1914. GENERAL DE GAULLE SUMS UP SITUATION. In a .broadcast to the French nation on September 18 on his return from Africa and the Middle East, General de Gaulle.summed up the situation in the following words: “The war with Germany began in 1914. The treaty of Versailles in fact ended nothing. From 1918 to 1936 there existed nothing'more than an absurd suspension of hostilities during which the enemy repaired his forces of aggression. . . . “The German attack began again in March, 1936, first on the Rhine, then in Austria, then in Czechoslovakia, all preparatory operations to the battles of Poland, Belgium and France, which again were only the preliminaries to the offensive against Russia while awaiting the supreme effort against the, Anglo-Saxons. . “In reality, the world is engaged in a thirty years’ war for or against the universal domination of Germanism.” The General, in speaking of the role of France, declared: “In this immense trial, the role of France in the past, in the present and the future has nothing in it that is humiliating. Quite the contrary! And I say so proudly to Frenchmen and to foreigner. For the past, we have only to utter the words ‘Marne,’ ‘Foch,’ ‘Clemenceau’ ... For the present, if it is evident that we allowed'Ourselves to be surprised, first by a devastating mechanised force, then by a colossal organisation of treason it is none the less evident that France _the whole of France-is now rising again in resistance while awaiting the hour of organised revenge. “At the present hour both the enemy and the traitors of Vichy are in open combat against the French people. To work their will on the public they are obliged to make use of the most atrocious system of oppression that the country has ever known throughout its history.” ' ' Speaking of those Frenchmen who, overcoming a thousand difficulties, escape from their country to join the Free French forces, General de Gaulle said: “When some day the yprld is able to measure the deeds of courage of the French who every day are succeeding in reaching us to serve -Be*, neath our banners, when the world learns what spirit animates their forces, when it becomes known what they have realised—and with what means! —‘the world will know that the alleged decadence of France is only an ignoble fiction of the oppressors.”