FRENCH UNITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 March 1943, Page 3

FRENCH UNITY

PROPOSAL BY NATIONAL COMMITTEE SUBMITTED TO GENERAL GIRAUD. FOUR VITAL CONDITIONS. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, March 14. The French National Committee has disclosed that it sent to General Giraud at the end of February a comprehensive four-point plan for complete French unity. The memorandum has been published on the eve of what is described as an important broadcast by General Giraud from Algiers. The memorandum calls for the unification of Farnce’s resistant forces under the direction of one provisional central organisation embracing all shades of French anti-Axis opinion, with a complementary representative council of resistance. The National Committee says that such a council would be formed by delegates mandated from metropolitan France from fighting elements, from Parliamentarians who refused to collaborate with the Germans, from the Legislatures of liberated territories, and from economic trade unionists and university groups in the empire. The memorandum outlines the conditions whereunder unity is possible. First, the so-called armistice concluded against French must be regarded as null and void in French North and West Africa. The impossibility must also be recognised of leaving in principal posts the men who were largely responsible for the capitulation of France and collaboration with the enemy. Secondly, all French territories as liberated must have their fundamental liberties restored. All citizens detained for the violation thereof must be freed. Thirdly, republican legality must be re-establish-ed. Fourthly, the establishment of .the French post-war constitution must be through a free expression of popular will. GUERILLA ARMY SAID TO NUMBER 100,000 OPEN WARFARE IN HAUTE SAVOIE. LONDON, March 13. Large numbers of French guerillas under General Cartier and other high officers are reported to be waging open warfare in Haute Savoie (a mountainous area of eastern France bordered by Switzerland, and Italy and occupied by Italians). The Axis authorities are rushing up reinforcements to quell the guerillas, who are said to be armed with American machineguns, rifles and revolvers which were dropped from Allied planes that recently flew over the district. Sounds of shooting have been heard from across the border in Geneva, says one Swiss newspaper. In other parts of France attacks against the German occupation forces have been carried out simultaneously with military precision in such widely separated places as Paris, Lyons, Lille, Brest, Chalons, and Rochelle, says the Swiss newspaper “Volksrecht.” These attacks are no longer individual undertakings, but are the beginning of organised partisan warfare. The newspaper emphasises that the upheaval coincides with the withdrawal of Axis troops from France to the Russian front. Though only half of the guerillas in the south of France were armed, they recently captured a strongly defended goods train which they converted into an armoured train, and then used it to carry fugitives from the Germans into the interior. u Total of Forces. The British United Press quoting the Swiss roports, states that the French guerilla army now numbers 100,000 active partisans. In the South of France the entire railway system is threatened with dislocation by sabotage. The French State police claim to havp tracked down the sabotage ring which has been responsible for interference with railways leading to the German bases on the Mediterranean.