IN GRIP OF GERMANS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 August 1942, Page 4

IN GRIP OF GERMANS

MR CHURCHILL ON VICHY MYTH OF “UNOCCUPIED FRANCE.” NAZIS IN FULL CONTROL. Mr Churchill has no illusions about Vichy. In a speech in the House of Commons recently he said: —“We have found it necessary to take precautions to prevent Madagascar falling into enemy hands by some dishonourable and feeble drifting or connivance by Vichy like that which injured us so much in Indo-China. . . . We

hold these places in trust for that gallant France which we have known and marched with, and whose restoration to her place among the great powers of the world is indispensable to the future of Europe. Madagascar rests under the safeguard of the United Nations. Vichy, in the grip of the Germans, has been made to bluster. That France that rose at St. Nazaire and will one day rise in indescribable fury against the Nazis understands what we have done and gives us its blessings.”

The “Vichy Government” and “Unoccupied France” have become terms used without realisation of their real meaning. Mr Churchill definitely reminds us in his speech that the Vichy Government, “in the grip of the Germans” is not a government at all. It represents in reality nothing but itself. In its administrative activity it has proved a failure, and the problem of supplies that it has been unable to control has grown as acute as the supplies themselves have grown rare. When produce grown in France becomes unfmdable Vichy can no longer deny where it is going, namely, to Germany, which country is the complete master of Vichy.

“Unoccupied France,” the other misleading term, has been taken far too much as a designation of a part of France that is unoccupied and therefore free. Travellers returned from unoccupied France are surprised at ignorance of the real situation. German commissions are everywhere. German officials in. all the large towns of unoccupied France take whatever they please. No ship can enter a port of “unoccupied France” without the Germans having the first right to its cargo, In addition to German commissions there are Italian commissions. Any idea of a France that is free in the “unoccupied zone” is therefore a myth. Is it not lime that this myth was exploded once for all? There is no Vichy Government as we understand the word. Vichy is now the headquarters of a Quisling, Laval, who intends to prove as obedient to the will of Germany, that is to say the will of the enemy of Britain and the United Na tions, as are all the other Quislings. Mr Churchill’s warning is timely. Vichy is “in the grip of the Germans.”