HUMILIATED FRANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 22, 25 July 1940, Page 10

HUMILIATED FRANCE

The tragedy of France imder the 1 heel of the conqueror seems to deepen daily. The plight of the wretched inhabitants could hardly have been worse if their leaders had elected to fight on instead of capitulating in the hope, apparently, of getting better terms. Such a hope has been completely falsified. The people, torn from their homes and normal life of peace by the onrush of the war, are left to shift for themselves as best they can, and their sufferings must be intense. Conditions are chaotic in this respect, I while the conquerors prepare for [further operations against their one [iTejnaining enemy.—Britain, On the

Vichy Government of Marshal Petain humiliations are heaped. Only outside France are Frenchmen free, and their feelings may be left to the imagination, for Vichy, at the instigation of the conqueror, has proclaimed them outlaws just as the Nazis did with prominent refugees from Germany. The latest humiliation is the quest for scapegoats on whom to visit blame for France's venturing to stand up and enter into war against Germany. M. Daladier is the chief scapegoat, and is to undergo, according to the news, examination by the Courts for his share of responsibility for the war. Such is the pass to which France has come, and life in Paris, says a cable message, "consists of dreary housewives forming up iv long queues to buy food, while Germans are thronging all quarters and buying promiscuously." It is not in France just now that any hope of the future lies, but in the growing band of Frenchmen overseas who are determined to fight on, beside Britain, for freedom.