MANY ESCAPES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 March 1942, Page 4

MANY ESCAPES

FRENCH WISHING TO JOIN DE GAULLE. VICHY & GERMANS WORRIED. Extracts from a Vichy document of instruction to the Prefect of a region of France whence many young men have escaped to fight on for freedom in the ranks of the Free French Army are:— “Every day attempts are made to put to sea in boats with the intention of reaching English ports. Every day our consuls in Spain are visited by young volunteers from the occupied zone, often even from the forbidden zone, half dead from fatigue and lack of food. “As to the intellectuals, professors, journalists, politicians, who keep up this propaganda by exciting others to commit stupid acts (such as inscriptions on walls) or who in talking of the future of Europe give vent to uncalled for considerations and appreciations, they are doubly guilty. “The government has already intervened on several occasions to beg for mercy for a number of these youths detained or condemned by the German authorities. The Marshal himself has often saved from execution students and schoolboys. Up to the present he has obtained satisfaction. Such appeals for mercy will not always be heard. The government is therefore resolved to take severe measures to put an end to the emigration of Frenchmen to dissident centres. The customs and frontier police have been given strictest instructions to prevent all Frenchmen between the ages of 17 and 40 from leaving the country.”