FORBIDDEN NEWSPAPER Wireless Programmes

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13330, 6 May 1941, Page 2

FORBIDDEN NEWSPAPER

Wireless Programmes

UNDER GESTAPO’S NOSE Somewhere in occupied France, a patriotic, pro-British newspaper is being printed and circulated under the nose of the Gestapo and the German conquerors (writes Henry Stone). Named after Rabelais’s immortal hero, “Pantagruel” is not a mere tract of the kinds distributed from time to time or posted on the walls at night in various parts of France. Those who have the courage to do so publish it under great risks (a chemist in Paris ’ and one in Versailles were sentenced to penal servitude for life by a German court martial quite recently for circulating hostile tracts). They requested their readers to pass “Pantagruel” round their friends. Its circulation has to be resricted because of the difficulty in obtaining newsprint. It is published every week whenever possible, printed on four pages and distributed by every possible means. One method is to send it by post to people in every district of the country whose addresses are found in directories or telephone books. General de Gaulle's propaganda staff did not know of its existence until this extraordinary little paper was brought to them by someone who has just arrived from France. Each issue has a note printed in big letters on the top of the first column which reads: “BEWARE —This newspaper is not a British tract. Any reader who may find it possible to find a way to make it reach Free French people in Britain would contribute in giving an ardent stimulant and a precious relief to those who 'are giving their lives for our liberty.” Here are some quotations from this third issue of “Pantagruel”:

“Our aim is not opposition or revolt against the authorities of occupation. We know that we lost the war and that the wise policy is a loyal collaboration, but not a cordial collaboration with the Germans.

“We believe that this policy does not oblige us to sentence General de Gaulle to death and grossly to insult England, our ally. England did not. betray us. She remains our ally, and she will be able to save us. Let us not forget that . . . “London has greatly suffered by German air bombing. But the British people are receiving the blows like sportsmen. What the French public must know and realise is that the spirit of resistance of the English is intact.”

In this third issue of “Pantagruel’ (published in October) long quotations of Mr Winston Churchill’s broadcast to the ..French nation are given with this comment: “What he (Churchill) said at the end —'If you cannot help us, at least don’t be an obstacle for us’ —might be regarded as our slogan. We must respect the signature of the Armistice. But don’t ask us to be the allies of Germany against Britain. We have the right to respect and love Great Britain, and we have the right to wish for a British victory.” On the back page was a fierce attack on Laval, then engaged in parleys with Hitler for a separate peace: “At the beginning Hitler showed himself reasonable. Now he wants us to commit an ignominy. He is going to ask us to collaborate with him against our English allies and friends. Laval is playing his last card. He has no right to drag us into that . . . we shall not do it.”