NATION AS PAWN

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 140, 16 June 1941, Page 7

NATION AS PAWN

DISLOYAL LEADERS Strong American Condemnation Of Darlan And Laval United Press Association.—Copyright. WASHINGTON, June 15.

The Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, yesterday issued a statement naming Laval and Darlan as the leaders in fostering the French surrender of their loyalties to Hitler, and alleging they were using France to fight Germany's battles in Syria. If the French people accepted Oils preposterous status, said Mr. Hu .H. they would find themselves co-belhgerents with Hitler in his desperate effort to conquer Britain and secure control of the seas. In the prevention of such a possibility both the French people and the people of the United States had a common interest of tremendous importance to the future. The British had entered Syria to prevent the further expansion of German aggression which the Vichy Government had permitted, if not abetted. Surrender of All French Ideal Aside from Syria, and considering only the aspects of Franco-German collaboration contained in the public statements of the Darlan-Laval element, it had been demonstrated that the people of France were expected not only to surrender permanently and unconditionally their loyalty to all French traditions, institutions, liberties, interests, culture and the entire way of life which had made France great, but actually to transfer all these loyalties and all hope for the future to Hitler in the hope of securing his personal favour. The adoption of Hitlerism would set the world back five or ten centuries.

The Vichy Government's spokesman, replying to Mr. Hull's statement that France was fighting Germany's battle in Syria, denied that Britain had any ground for intervention, but admitted that German aeroplanes had used Syria as a stepping-off stone, and that the ItaloGerman armistice commission might have sent some seized French war material to Iraq. The Axis, he claimed, was acting within the rights of the armistice convention. France had adopted the policy of Franco-German collaboration on her own initiative.

The French financial attache to the Embassy in Washington has resigned his post. He says this is because he disagrees with Vichy's policy.