SERIOUS CRISIS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 252, 6 August 1941, Page 5

SERIOUS CRISIS.

VICHY RELATIONS WITH BERLIN. THE INDO-CHINA QUESTION LONDON, August 5. A serious crisis in Vichy was admitted by Count Fernand de- Brinon, Vichy’s representative in occupied France, when he returned to Paris from Vichy. “The time has come when the most delicate/ problems of French-German relations must be solved,” he said. He added that Marshal Petain and Admiral Darlan were absolutely determined not to break off their policy of collaboration with Germany.

The Associated Press of Great Britain says observers who have recently come fi’om France says that France is seething with discontent under Vichy *rule. The country, particularly the unoccupied section, is almost ripe for revolt, and it is believed that the fall of Marshal Petain would lead to open rebellion.

A Vichy Government spokesman declared that France was not giving any other Power military facilities in the French Empire such as she granted Japan in Indo-China. “Indo-China is cut off from France and it was impossible to safeguard the country,” he said. “That is why we accepted Japan’s military precautions. Such a state of affairs does not exist elsewhere in the French Empire, particularly in French Africa.” The German-controlled Paris press professes to see the hand of the United States Ambassador to Vichy (Admiral W. D. Leahy) behind the break in French-German collaboration. One newspaper angrily demands: “Are we or are we not for French-German collaboration? That is what they want to know on the German side.” The newspaper adds that always there is the disquieting figure of Admiral Leahy in the background. “He is Churchill and Stalin rolled into one,” the newspaper states.