VICHY REGIME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1943, Page 5

VICHY REGIME

TRAGIC LAUGHING STOCK IN FRANCE. Vichy, with its aged Marshal and crooked, fake Prime Minister, has become a tragic laughing stock. Its decrees are obeyed—more or less—because they are German orders and there is no choice, but it has lost the respect of the nation. A writer in the Nazi-controlled “Les Nouveaux Temps,” of July 16, attacks the Vichy regime, which is both upheld by Germany and attacked by Germany’s pen-slaves of the press: “While the Head of the State proclaimed that equal sacrifices would have to be made by all, in fact social injustices have grown more scandalous day by day, month by month, year by year. . . . While all church intervention is unpopular in France, no better means of fighting Freemasonry has been devised than the resuscitation of the ‘priests’ party.’ Whereas new men were needed, the most wretched and decrepit civilians and Army men have been salvaged and put in key- positions for the realisation of French regeneration. “In many cases the change of regime merely took the form of a mediocre revenge for conservative elements, who had hitherto always been beaten in elections, on their successful Left opponents; it was also the revenge of die factory-owner on the trade unions, of wealthy country people over agricultural co-operative societies; of the parish priest over the town hall officials. That was not what was aimed at, but that was what happened.”.