BRITISH BLOCKADE OF EUROPE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 12

BRITISH BLOCKADE OF EUROPE

Protest From France VIOLENT ATTACK ON . CHURCHILL

(By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) VICHY, August 22.

“Britain’s refusal to lift the blockade against France is an act of hostility worse than Oran,” declared the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Baudouin, in a violent broadcast attack on Mt. Churchill. He added that it was inhuman and unworthy of a Christian country. M. Baudouin continued: “Who does not feel that the blockade throws a shadow f;ir into the future? A world died on May 10. We nave better things to do than to regret it. The nations of all continents will be bound in an ever-growing solidarity, from which Mr. Churchill is excluding England by not allowing a great part of Europe to be sufficiently fed. “Mr. Churchill reproaches France for giving up the fight. We are not weary of repeating the truth in opposition to repeated lies. “In June, the French army, dispersed, encircled and decimated, had only Its breasts with which to resist the invader. Air. Churchill says that'2,ooo,000 English soldiers were ready for battle. I affirm without fear of denial that in June only two British divisions, totalling 50,000 men, were fighting on our side, and one-tenth of the British Air Force was flying at long intervals over an ever-wider battlefield. Forces in Africa. “How can Mr. Churchill say that we had sufficient forces outside France to continue the struggle when our overseas soldiers did not total a single army? If he wishes to justify the grave Somaliland reverse, will he be able to convince anyone that a garrison of 5000 at Jibuti would be sufficient? Who would believe that our four North African divisions and the 60,000 men stationed in Syria would have continued the fight? All the fighting men we questioned made one reproach against the former French Goevrnment. It was that they were too long in drawing a lesson from the events. “We were conquered because we did not deserve victory. For Churchill the crime of the men of Vichy is that they have not abandoned French territory and not continued the struggle in the colonies, but their honour is that at no time have they dissociated the country’s leaders from the country itself. To leave France would have been to behave as cowards while pretending to be heroes. If the Government was to be blamed for taking the painfui armistice decision, it should have been blamed by the fighting men and not by Mr. Churchill. France does not. expect salvation from Britain. France expects herself to achieve rebirth. “The blockade is a terrible foreboding of famine. France needs the products of her colonies in order to live. All the things that we need at present and are likely to need still more next winter are accumulating at over.-eas ports because the English Fleet will not permit them to pass. “I sent proposals to London on August 2. After three weeks of silence, Mr. Churchill replied that no discussion was possible. “The French Government, while bowing before this interdict, considers the dictatorship of famine inhuman and inefficacious. The horrors of battle may be forgotten, but the memory of a child and its mother suffering brands itself on the memory of generations. Who does not feel that Ibis pitiless arm strikes first at the small and weak and hits the vanquished before exhausting the victor.”