OPTIMISM IN FRANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 December 1941, Page 8

OPTIMISM IN FRANCE

TONE OF RECENT LETTERS. People in Britain receiving letters from France are surprised at the optimism of the writers. This optimism is to be found not only in letters from French people but from English people who have had the misfortune of having been caught and held in France by the invasion. A letter recently received in London from an English woman talks of an early reunion with her husband in England. Other letters from French people contain expressions of certainty that the war will soon be over.

While this optimism may seem strange, it must not be forgotten that in France they are close to the Germans and are able to judge the difference between the over-confident, swaggering Germans of the first days of success and the worried soldiers of occupation of today, surrounded by a hostile, sullen population and haunted by the constant fear of being sent to the Russian front. The German always has suffered from an inferiority complex, probably one of the psychological causes of the war, and every German soldier in France must have realised and had to acknowledge that the people of the country conquered show every evidence of having lived a far happier, fuller life than the wretched regimentation of the Reich’s inhabitants.