FORCED LABOUR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 September 1942, Page 3

FORCED LABOUR

NEW AND DRASTIC LAW ' IN FRANCE LAVAL ACTS UNDER. NAZI . PRESSURE. GERMAN WAR. INDUSTRY SHORT OF WORKERS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, September 14. Under pressure Laval lias introduced a new law conscripting all men between the ages of 18 and 50 and unmarried women between 21 and 35 “Tor work that is necessary in the national interest.” British and other foreign residents are also affected.

The “Daily Telegraph’s” correspondent on the French frontier says the new law is the most drastic ever passed in France, and it is the result of the Germans’ failure to induce French workers to go to German factories. Any person whose work is not considered “useful” can be transferred to other employment. Employers are forbidden to engage workers except through the Government Labour Service, and they must also undertake to form work gangs, presumably for work in Germany. The penalties for infringement are five years’ imprisonment and a fine.

The workers of France, by the frustration of Hitler’s plan to entice 350,000 of their number to work in Germany, have created a shortage of labour for the German machine which in weeks to come may be a major factor in the battle for Russia. This point was made in a broadcast by M. Andre Philip, National Commissioner of Labour and the Interior for Fighting France,

Everything was tried, he said, to get the 350,000 Frenchmen to go to Germany, but most of them preferred misery and destitution rather than submit to alien rule, and Vichy succeeded in getting only 30,000 workers, mostly labourers, women, and foreigners, for German industry. Hitler was furious, and is attempting to use force, but M. Philip contended that compulsion would come too late, for the Russian winter would begin in a month’s time, and now, at the time of the decisive assault on the Russian front, the Gorman plan was short of 300,000 mon.

MASK DROPPED

LAVAL SELLS FRENCH INTO SLAVERY. DRIVEN BY INFAMY TO MORE DESPERATE MEASURES. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.50 a.m.) NEW YORK, September 14. The newspaper “P.M.” says: “Laval has finally torn the mask of hyprocrisy from his face and sold the French people into Nazi slavery. Step by step he has helped his Nazi masters and now he has taken one of the most infamous steps in all history by ordering the compulsory labour of his people on behalf of their bitterest, historic enemy and against their former Allies and friends. Laval, for weeks has driven France into Hitler’s arms with deadly purpose, persecuting the Jews at Hitler’s orders, protesting when we bombed Nazi military points in occupied Franco and urging Frenchmen •to shoot their former Allies m Madagascar. The signs are clear that his own infamy is driving him to more desperate measures. We would be halfwits to expect him to call a halt anywhere short of open war with us.