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Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 October 1943, Page 3

“The French monarchy of the 18th century was a very arbitrary form of government. It imprisoned its critics and its rebels in that gloomy fortress without trial, and it kept them there indefinitely at the pleasure of the King’s Ministers. But it didn’t torture them. It didn’t beat them up. It didn’t starve them under a tropical sun like convicts set to forced labour, as some of the prisoners of Vichy were starved in North Africa. Voltaire was twice a prisoner in the Bastille. He spent his captivity with piles of books to occupy his enforced leisure, and he used it to write one of the longest and most famous of his poems. Despots in the 18th century were much more civilised and far more humane than the Nazis and Fascists of our contemporary world.”— H. N. Brailsford, speaking on “France” in a 8.8. C. broadcast.