SECRET PAPERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 August 1942, Page 4

SECRET PAPERS

CIRCULATING IN OCCUPIED FRANCE

CONDEMNATION OF VICHY - REGIME.

STORY OF NAZI TERRORISM.

No condemnation of the Vichy Government and its unrepresentative character could be more severe than the fact that clandestine newspapers and news sheets, of which many have been circulating for a long time in the occupied zone, have now made their appearance :n the unoccupied zone. This means more than that Petain has lost almost all credit; it means that unoccupied France is looked upon by the French themselves as merely being held <in trust for the Germans by Petain, Darlan and the quisling Laval. Three clandestine newspapers in the unoccupied zone have joined forces, and an innovation is that one now issues a special edition destined to be smuggled into the occupied zone. The three papers among them reach more than a million readers,, it is estimated in circles in London where their activities are known and followed with more than ordinary interest. The lesser fear of discovery makes the writers write more as though they were not, like their colleagues in the occupied zone, looking every minute over their shoulder for the Gestapo agent. Not that the men in the unoccupied zone who produce clandestine newspapers are not running great risks.

“Liberation,” one of the secret newspapers, makes its appeal to the workers. In one copy the leading article is entitled, “Call to the Workers.” It is a reply to the artificial corporative system which Vichy has tried to foist upon the workers of France. “News From the Occupied Zone” is a piece of fine writing,as well as a telling of facts:

“Nantes—Daybreak, bleak, grey and cold, fifty men, fifty Frenchmen conveyed to a s;one quarry near by. They are pushed a gainst the hard rocky side. A machine-gun is already there in position, and opens fire. A stream of bul-lets—tap-tap of phantom mechanical finger tips on the doors of eternitysprays over the living flesh. A few seconds, fifty dead.

“Old men among them, men maimed in the present war, heroes of the last war, Jost, president of the National Ex-soldiers’ Union. There are young men, some little more than children. Moquais, son of a member of Parliament of Paris, 17 years old. A pupil of the local high school, also 17, interested in mechanics, set up harmless crystal wireless sets in his garden mere boys. “An hour later, lorries carried hastily nailed down coffins containing bodies still warm--the way they took could be followed by the trail of blood. In the empty deserted quarry only a puddle of red, and red splashes on the rocky side. Next day, flowers in thousands, strewn by widows, orphans, friends, inanimate witnesses of the oath of vengeance, of the oath of death uttered by France on the morrow, of murder, an oath that will be carried out before long. “A few dtys later, the Kommandantur of Nantes issues a list of 48 names, 48 of the victims, two names lacking. The Germans themselves were ashamed. The two names were those of women.”