A Hundred Days

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 274, 22 September 1944, Page 5

A Hundred Days

E are writing this on D-Day+99. ©n June 6, British and American troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. To-day, September 14, they are over the German frontier headed irresistibly for Berlin. This does not mean that all the German troops are already out of France. There are still strong detachments in the southeast corner, in Atlantic and Channel ports, in the east dnd the north-east. But France is free. Frenchmen administer it from Paris, and French troops in increasing numbers are taking over its vital points. Nor has it happened, as the Germans hoped it would and many, even on our own side, feared it might, that the French have proved ungrateful or difficult. There has been no friction that posterity will remember. What will be remembered is the delirious joy of a crushed, half dazed, and wholly bewildered nation restored, almost in the twinkling of an eye, to full liberty and sovereignty again. For whatever was known at Supreme Headquarters, there was neither knowledge nor expectation anywhere else that events would move at such incredible speed. It has been a sensation to their friends all over the world, and to the French people themselves it has been something for which they were not even capable of preparing themselves and now can hardly believe. They do believe, but they are still, like the father of the afflicted child in the Gospels, looking round for support for their faith. They believe, and they are grateful. Let us not forget the moving words of the spokesman of Fighting France in London (quoted on this page) the day Paris was freed. There will still be stresses and strains. Forty million people do not emerge from years of humiliation and hopelessness without recrimination and bitterness, But the cure for that is time — time and the thought that all the Germans still in France will in a day. or two be captured or killed.