“PETAIN FOR POWER”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 October 1943, Page 4

“PETAIN FOR POWER”

BLUE PRINT FOR DICTATORSHIP EVIDENCE IN FRENCH PAPER Nazis in the past have “discovered” documents which have always been dubious and rapidly proved fakes. “Le Franc-Tireur,” a clandestine paper edited and distributed by patriots in France at the risk of their lives, has made a discovery which is no fake. They have unearthed a copy of “Le Grand Occident,” organ of a reactionary sect, published in April, 1939, five months before the war started. This paper is startling in many ways. No one at the time look much notice of it, looking upon the paper as one more small party organ, of which there were then so many. Its director is indicated as Paul Ferdonnet. The outbreak of war, strangely, found him in Germany, and, known as “the traitor of Stuttgart.” He was the French Lord Haw-Haw. But the front cover of the paper, reproduced photographically by the clandestine paper, carries the banner-line,' “Petain for Power.” Another title in large type denounces “Jews and Freemasonry, these are the enemies.” This is now familiar, but what is more striking is the fact that the appeal for Petain as head of the State is accompanied by a drawing of the Francisque, the double-headed axe which is the symbol of Vichy. The leading article is clever propaganda; while apparently highly patriotic and anti-Hitler. it makes it appear that only a head, a leader, can save France, and that saviour must be Petain. After the headline and the symbol, it is difficult indeed to disprove that Petain's coup d’etat was not long prepared and the French sold out months, perhaps years, before the first shot was fired.