PLIGHT OF FRENCH PEOPLE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 119, 13 February 1941, Page 10

PLIGHT OF FRENCH PEOPLE

Food Rations Very Meagre

COMPLETE FAITH IN MARSHAL PETAIN

Dominion Special Service.

AUCKLAND, February 12.

The plight of the Freueli people fe well shown in a letter which has been received by an Auckland resident from relatives in unoccupied France. Though they are not bordering on starvation their rations are very meagre and on every hand one sees pinched faces, the letter states. I 1 or all that, they say that they have the utmost faith in Marshal Petain amt believe that it the Germans force bis hand General Hey gand will ally himself with Britain in North Africa. According to the letter each person in unoccupied France is allowed each month lib. of sugar. jflb. of meat, jib. of macaroni, dlb. of rice. It will be noticed that neither milk nor butter is mentioned and potatoes also have no place in the regular diet of the French today. In the past, four months they have had neither butter nor fat of any kind nor milk, ami between August and November of last year three persons in one family had to share 31b. of potatoes. Soap, too, is a luxury in unoccupied Fram-e. Each person is allowed only jib. of soap each month for both toilet and laundry purposes. In normal times (he French eat a good deal of bread but lately the average breakfast fare is a little bread without butter, and tea without milk. In southern France there are vegetables bill they do not appear to be plentiful.

There is an iron censorship between occupied and unoccupied France, the letter continues, and the sole means of correspondence is ‘by postcards similar to those used by soldiers on active service. One chooses one or more of the stereotyped printed messages and scores out the remainder. The recipient of the letter wonders, if those are the living conditions of unoccupied France, what, the people of the part, of the country overrun by the Germans are suffering, and what their daily rations are.