COUNTRY OF DEAD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 May 1943, Page 4

COUNTRY OF DEAD

TERRIBLE FOOD SITUATION IN FRANCE - GOVERNMENT HOPELESSLY INCOMPETENT. NO CONTROL OVER BLACK MARKET. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, May 12. Emphasising France’s desperate food situation, the Paris Radio’s commentator, Jean Paquis, declared that France would soon be a country of dead and half-dead people, which the Allies would not need to

invade. „ “Millions of Frenchmen are hungry, he said, “because of the incompetence of a handful of men who do not know how to deal with the food situation. Frenchmen have to live on the rations which the black market is generous enough to leave in the shops. The Government’s black market regulations are not only out of date, but usually are applied by madmen. It would need an army of hangmen to deal with France s black marketeers. One would think an underground sabotage organisation was handling the black market in France. French peasants last year slaughtered over 200,000 cattle illegally. The Government needs to take ruthless steps to avoid disaster.”