FAMINE IN FRANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 August 1942, Page 4

FAMINE IN FRANCE

SERIOUS RIOTING REPORTED IN LANGUEDOC PROVOKED BY APPALLING CONDITIONS. — DISTURBANCES IN MANY TOWNS. The value of evidence from neutral sources needs no pointing out. Conditions in Languedoc arc described in “La Sentinelie,” a Swiss publication, according to its correspondent in France. Describing rioting which occurred in Languedoc caused by shortage of food, the correspondent of “La Sentinelle” says: “Life, I know, may have been quite pleasant in Vichy, and I know that certain districts have hardly been affected. But I know also that there are others, in one of which I find myself, where children, especially babies, who do not get sufficient milk, and old people are dying like lies, where doctors raise their hands powerless before the multiplication of cases of tuberculosis, and where newspapers are forbidden to publish the numbers of deaths at the hospitals,' so terrifying are they. “And even today perhaps one must not complain too much, for since the recent disturbances the food situation is a bit better. “I will not now discuss at length the disturbances which occurred in all the towns from Narbonne to Nimes. The spark which set the powder off was the requisitioning by the occupying authorities of a whole cargo of a ship that docked at Sete. The townspeople of Sete, led by the dockers, demonstrated violently and broke through the police barrier but were driven back by water from hose pipes.” The correspondent tells how the premises of the Prefecture were besieged at Montpellier. Miners of the region of Arles refused to extract coal for the Italians, while French homes were without fuel. The windows of the reactionary Legion and the Parti Populaire Francais were broken. Official rations, the writer says, are not sufficient to keep body and soul together, and the black market, evil as it is, is even welcome. “Without the black market the number of those who die of starvation would be ten times more,” the correspondent adds.