VICHY & UNITED STATES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 November 1942, Page 3

VICHY & UNITED STATES

RELATIONS CONSIDERED BROKEN. LONDON, November 8. Marshal Petain presided over a Council of Ministers today. Previously he and Laval had a conference with General Weygand, who was President General in French North Africa before Admiral Darlan came into the French Cabinet. The Vichy Cabinet decided that the United States, in carrying the war to French territory, has de facto broken off relations with France. AMERICAN POLICY PAST RELATIONS WITH VICHY. MR CORDELL HULL EXPLAINS. WASHINGTON, November 8. Elaborating his statement on United States relations with Vichy, the Secretary of State (Mr Cordell Hull) listed five main purposes of the past collaboration with Vichy, as follows: — 1. To pave the way and prepare the background in the most effective manner for the sending of a military ex-‘ pedition to the western Mediterranean to assist British operations further east. 2. Giving the United States a week-by-week opportunity of gaining highly important information virtually from inside the German-controlled areas and from North Africa regarding the subversive activities of the Axis and other important phases of the international situation. 3. Keeping alive the basic concepts of freedom of the French people, looking to an ultimate restoration of the French free institutions as they existed before the German occupation. 4. Retention of the closest personal touch with all phases• of the FrancoGerman situation under the FrenchGerman armistice, including the resistance to the increased German pressure on France and the constant efforts to prevent the delivery of the French Fleet or any part thereof to Germany or to giving military support to Germany. 5. Mainaenance of the closest relations with the French people and encouragement and leadership in opposition to Hitlerism. Those persons who had been concerned about the policy of the United States Government toward Vichy were now able to see the entire content of that policy, which was directed ultimately at the liberation of France. The British and Canadian Governments wholeheartedly favoured and supported that policy.