NO LONGER PLEASANT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 October 1943, Page 4

NO LONGER PLEASANT

LIFE ON THE RIVIERA. In June, 1940, rich people, French and. foreigners, fled from the North of France to the Riviera, the Lisbon correspondent of the ‘’Manchester Guardian” wrote recently. Though little food is produced in this region, the hotels were full and good food could be had. Casinos and night clubs were full. Obliging people cashed cheques on London or New York, to be collected later. Jewels were pawned, the sun shone every day, and it was safe to be heard talking any language from German to English. A year later, English residents were asked to leave the coast for inland departments. But when the Germans decided that unoccupied Vichy France was to become the occupied southern zone there were weeping and wailing at Cannes and Nice. Jews disappeared, mysteriously, foreigners escaped over lhe Spanish frontier or went to concentration camps, the casinos shut down, and the Riviera was abandoned to the natives. Native workers. were sent to work in Corsica; while Italian and German workmen began feverishly fortifying the beautiful Corniche. The Promenade des Anglais at Nice, the Croisette at Cannes are nearly empty. The palace hotels, the villas, the dressmakers, the jewellers, and the night clubs have put up their shutters. The natives stand' in queues from 6 a.m. in the hope of buying a few “blettes” (a very poor relation of celery). The policemen stop passersby every fifty yards to ask for their papers.

A stranger who goes to a good restaurant sits down to a nice hot soup, slightly tinted by some meat extract and thickened with a few fine strips of swede, followed by some boiled fennel free of anything resembling fatty matter; for dessert, stewed dried apricots sweetened with saccharin; a little local wine; cost, with tip, 6s. In the evening it is still possible to go to Monte Carlo, where the casino remains open. At Monte Carlo the “little restaurant” is still to be found where, if you know the password, you may get quite a good meal at a price running into pounds. Vichy before the war was one of the fashionable watering-places to which rich people brought their tired livers. In the intervals of taking the waters they danced, gambled, and flirted. Business deals, straight and crooked, were carried through. The international crowd was a mixture of society people, business men, Parliamentarians, sportsmen, stage people, “rentiers,” and pretty ladies. Today it is the political capital of France. 'Ministers and typists, ambassadors and attaches, civil servants of all grades live and work in hotel bedrooms. Intrigues of all sorts go on in hotel bars, and it is more difficult to find a room than it was in the height of the prewar season.

And it is in this climate that Pierre Laval is working for the “National Revolution.” The collaborationists' claim that it is entirely owing to this Vichy atmosphere that the African colonies were lost. They are afraid that if the Government remains at Vichy still worse is to come and that many Vichyites are already preparing to help the Allies when they land in France.