VICHY BETRAYAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1943, Page 4

VICHY BETRAYAL

DENOUNCED BY FRENCHMAN WHO REPENTED FORMER DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF LEGION The 8.8. C. broadcast to France on August 29 a strange document, tragic and pathetic. It was from “somewhere in France,” written by none other than Francois Valentin, the first direc-tor-general of the Legion of French Volunteers, whose third anniversary has just been celebrated by Vichy. “On August 29 the Legion will celebrate its third anniversary,” said M. Valentin. “Until the return to power of Pierre Laval, I was the directorgeneral of the Legion. In this capacity, and whatever my intentions, I contributed to the deceiving of a number of Frenchmen, Legionaries and others, on their duty as good Frenchmen. It is to them specially that I make this appeal in order to free my conscience.” Referring to Vichy, M. Valentin said: “A cry of anger goes up from our hearts when we look back the road covered since three years and, remembering the promises and hopes of the beginning, we note the realities, the downward progress from expediency to expediency, from lie to lie, from one coward - iy act to another. “But how could it have been otherwise? Our mistake was to believe that one could revive a country before liberating it. One cannot rebuild one’s house while it is burning. We were told, and we repeated over and over again, ‘To save France all that is necessary is to obey and be united’.” Referring to German and Vichy propaganda that the French colonies have been lost to British and Americans, M. Valentin gives this advice to his compatriots: “Every time our overseas provinces are spoken of as being no longer French, for the only reason that the Germans can no longer set up in them control commissions or Gestapo, think of Alsace and Lorraine which certainly also form part of our national unity but of which no mention is now ever made.” M. Valentin called on all to join the resistance movement, of whose members he said: “Many are setting the example with admirable abnegation and devotion. Thousands have died facing firing squads. Hundreds of thousands suffer and languish in filthy prisons. Others are daily risking their lives. It is these soldiers without uniform who incarnate the highest traditions of French heroism.”