THE FRENCH TRIALS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 39, 14 August 1940, Page 10

THE FRENCH TRIALS

OPENING AT RIOM

LONDON, August 13.

Discussing Marshal Petain's broadcast to the French people, a London commentator said that it was surely more than a mere coincidence that the French war guilt trial began a few hours before Marshal Petain spoke. The old soldier ruefully admitted that his attempts to persuade the Germans to permit him to return to Paris had failed. He was aware, he said, of the surprise of the people of Paris at the actions of their leaders and especially of his own. He knew that the people considered that the right place for the Government was Paris and he shared that feeling.

Since the armistice with Germany his Government had endeavoured to persuade the Germans to install them in Paris and Versailles, but on August 7 the German Government informed him that for material reasons it could not authorise the transfer.

The Marshal did not explain what those material reasons were, but a message from Switzerland received tonight „ indicates the terms that Germany has demanded for the privilege of returning to Paris. She demands the control of all the unoccupied French ports, including Marseilles and Toulon, and also the whole Swiss frontier. Before he came to this humiliating confession, the hero of Verdun cast the blame for the present wretchedness of France on a number of factors —the corruption of the administration, the spread of alcoholism, the gangrene-like disorganisation of the State, the laziness and incompetence of the officials, and the systematic sabotage, which, he said, had been indulged in to provoke social disorder or international revolution. That inefficiency and treachery, he said, would be severely punished, and the Supreme Court is presumably to be the instrument of punishment.

Today's proceedings were confined to a long statement by the Public Prosecutor, who said he had documentary proof of the abuse of office committed by Ministers, ex-Ministers, and subordinates in order to lead the country into war. He had documentary evidence that the same men had committed crimes against the safety of the State.

Curiously enough, the names of these guilty men were not revealed, but in spite of this the Court decided to proceed with the trial. The farcical nature of such proceedings is already obvious to all the world outside France, and a good many people inside France have a shrewd idea who are the men really responsible for the French catastrophe. One thing is certain: the guilty persons will no more be found among the accused at the trial than the real perpetrators of the burning down of the Reichstag, in Germany, were by the.trial at Leipzig.

Menzies) had suffered a very great loss indeed in the death of three such able colleagues.