GIRL'S ELOPEMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 116, 19 May 1939, Page 10

GIRL'S ELOPEMENT.

"DON'T MAKE A FUSS."

ROMANCE WITH GERMAN REFUGEE. WANTS TO SETTLE IN AFRICA. (Special—By Air Mall.) LONDON, April 29. Her parents and the French police were this, week searching for 16-year-old Joan Valentine Thomas, a retired South African merchant's daughter, who was reported to have eloped with a German refugee, 24-year-old Fritz Herange, at Nice, in the south of France. !Mrs. Thomas, the girl's mother, said: "Soon after they met I noticed that Fritz was a little too interested in Joan, but he seemed a nice young man and I thought nothing of it at the time. After all Joan is only a baby. Fritz told 11s about all his troubles. He left Germany liecause, though he claims he is not Jewish, he is strongly anti-Hitler. When he wrote and asked to marry Joan I decided it was time to put a stop to it.

"Yesterday morning I went shopping ami her sister Doreen, and we met Fritz. 1 told him that if he did not leave Joan alone 1 would fro to the police. He said he loved Joan, wanted to marry her. and asked me not to make a fuss about it. Joan refused to come home with me and 1 helieve she met Fritz, on the Promenade des Anglais.

"At about 7 p.m. she asked me for some money to buy some chewing gum. She was only going to one of the shops near. When she did not return I became worried and my husband suggested that we should go out and look for her.

"Then it occurred to* me that she had run away with Fritz. 1 would not mind f.o much if it were an English boy earning only £1 a week, but if she married Fritz she will become a German. Tf it were Doreen, who is older, it would be different, but Joan is so young."

Mr. Thomas takes a different view of the romance. He said: "Fritz seems an upright young man. He told me he wanted to settle in South Africa and become a British citizen. I helped him to fill up the necessary papers. Of course I <lid not know that he intended to elope with my daughter."