SEEDS OF HATRED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 February 1942, Page 4

SEEDS OF HATRED

SOWN BY NAZIS IN . FRANCE RECENT SHOOTINGS. REWARDS GO The ruthless, wholesale shooting of French hostages in France by the Germans has effectively sown the seeds of hatred between Germany and France. The action of the Germans has aroused the wrath also of Mr Churchill and President Roosevelt. But what of tomorrow? The writer has spoken with numbers of French refugees in London. They are not surprised at all at the German atrocities. There were plenty during t-he last -war, they say, adding that we English, large-hearted, generous, were only too willing to forget and forgive, and, they say, being gentlemen ourselves we treated the Germans as gentlemen. Skilful propaganda on the part of the Germans made us bglieve the Germans had perhaps had a raw deal; and within two years we were saying in England, in many circles, that we had been too hard on the Germans, that France was imperialist, some going even so far as to say we had fought on the wrong side! During the last war thousands of French people in the north of France were driven from home like cattle and sent into Germany to labour for the Germans. Belgians, too, were cruelly treated, and British prisoners had many complaints of harsh treatment to make. The Germans shot Nurse Edith Cavell. Fifty thousand children never found their parents again. The condemnation of innocent Frenchmen to suffer death in the proportion of 100 Frenchmen for every German is at least a proof that the Nazis have given up all hope of collaboration freely accepted on the part of the French. It has shown also that Vichy is entirely in the hands of the Nazis, and that Vichy cannot be considered the representatives of France today. Dr. Goebbels can shriek as he will, but he can no longer prove that Germans are not barbarians. The Nazis offered a reward of 15 million francs for anyone who would betray the slayers of the Germans. Such a sum means freedom from want or worry for a lifetime. The reward was unclaimed. It was followed by the cruellest, lowest form of bribery, an appeal to the dearest affections, an offer of the release of a prisoner of war related to anyone who would betray the avengers. “And you English,” our French friends ask, “are you going to forget Coventry with the line of graves, Glasgow and London? Are you once more going to put the German on his feet, tell the world he is after all quite a nice fellow, that it was only that wicker Hitler who led him astray, let him off his debts, advance him money, so that he can build a bigger, more efficient, more devilish military machine still that this time will make certain of the invasion of Britain and the smashing of this home of liberty?”