Britons Stranded In fans

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21248, 19 October 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

Britons Stranded In fans

Help From America

yyHEN THE FIRST south express with direct connection with Paris for over a month was coming into Lisbon’s Rossio Station, writes Henry Buckley in the Daily Express, I did not think it worth while to go and meet it. There won’t be any one getting out of France anyway, I thought. Still I went, and who should I see clambering out of a first-class car but my old friend Walter Kerr, who was turned out of Paris because the New York Herald-Tribune is not liked by the Germans. Off came four or five others. Sam Pierce, American ambulance worker, who is going back to the States to tell of the fine work Anne Morgan, J.P.’s sister, has done and is doing with her relief unit in Paris, and Katherine Garrett, society girl who is with the same unit, and Lieutenant Thomas Mcßride, who went to France to organise the second Lafayette esquadrille (air force volunteers), and David Q. Coster, of the American Field Service, who for two weeks was a prisoner in Brussels. So I am full of Paris gossip. Believe it or not, there are 600 British civilians in Paris, and Walter says it’s a great sight to see them—some proudly wear their ribbons of the last war—sitting in front of the cafes discussing the war freely, indifferent to the German soldiers who are strolling here and there. The British elected one Colonel Shaw as their spokesman to speak to their consul-general. Seventy-five Francs a Week Although the Americans didn’t stress it, I gather that the American Embassy in Paris is doing a really great job of work for the British. TVey are giving those who haven’t funds—it is almost impossible to get any money out of the banks—-seventy-five francs a week. The Stars and Stripes floats over the British Embassy in the Faubourg St. Honore and likewise over the Duke of Windsor’s home in the Boulevard Suchet, before which gendarmes lounge. But I don’t think they clean all those brasses on the door. One non-combatant Briton was arrested and placed in a concentration camp at Alencon. Our non-combatant made such a fuss and insisted so hard that he was an American that at last the Germans threw him out of the camp. There is one bright spot in the lives of the prisoners at this and at other camps. That is when a car drives up with one of what Sam Pierce calls “Anne Morgan’s hellcats,” those American society girls who have done a great humanitarian work. They bring toothbrushes, food, dainties, needles, thread and things which mean so much to prisoners. They are greatly

German Propaganda

hampered because they cannot get the food in. Again quoting Sam, rushing in all over France today are neat, briskly efficient German doctors and white-clad nurses of the German social aid service bringing supplies of medicine and food for children. This is of great propaganda value. And —still quoting Sam —propaganda value in helping the French would be of tremendous value to a democratic nation like the United States. Walter found his messages were not going. He went to the Paris-Soir offices, which are now the censorship headquarters, and found all his messages detained. The present technique of !the Paris correspondent is to have their stuff sent by plane to Berlin and cabled to America from there. They told him the New York Herald-Tribune was not well looked upon and that he could not work there and that he must leave the country. On his way downstairs Walter looked in at the old Daily Express office thinking of the old days. He found a German fraulein busy typing, people rushing in and out. There is a newspaper edited there now called the West Front, an organ for German troops in France. Good Food Needed What are the people of Paris thinking about, I asked the arrivals. All said more or less the same thing—thinking how to get enough to eat. Walter said the food was excellent at the Lancaster Hotel, though the pheasant was out of cold storage. The explanation: German staff officers live there.

Sam and the others lived at the Hotel Bristol in the Faubourge St. Honore, over which floats the great Stars and Stripes, and you have to show your American passport to the gendarme at the door in order to get in, for it is reserved entirely for Americans.

If you have money you can eat well at Prunier’s or Maxim’s, although the latter place is now the favourite resort of German officers.

The average Parisian occasionally gets cold storage veal, but usually not much besides bread, beans, macaroni. There is food in the countryside, but no transport. Walter reported, as do other correspondents, on a bicycle.

Generally speaking, the people are relying on a British victory, but they know so little of what is going on that they are bewildered. The German propaganda is terrific, and—so they say in Paris—the 8.8. C. might explain the British point of view vis-a-vis France in a rather more conciliatory fashion and in a more reasoning tone. This would help greatly.