TENSE EXPECTANCY

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 72, 21 September 1940, Page 11

TENSE EXPECTANCY

VICHY UNPOPULAR

THE WARSHIPS' MISSION

(By Telegraph—Press AssocUtion-i-CopyrlS*t»l

LONDON, September 20. Reports reaching Madrid from Morocco indicate tense expectancy throughout French North; Africa,, where a decision to accept the offer of British protection is expected daily. The Madrid correspondent of the "Daily Express" says that General Verget, the newly-appointed French Resident-General in North Africa, is having great difficulty in handling the situation. There have been wholesale arrests of army officers and civil servants and they have apparently been carried out reluctantly in th« face of popular opposition and widespread sympathy for General de Gaulle's cause. The French Foreign Minister, M. Baudouin, said at Vichy that Britain • was notified before the six French warships last week left the Mediterranean for Dakar. The warships passed Gibraltar without a single gun firing at them and not the slightest attempt was made to impede their passage. The mission of the warships was to sup- , port the preservation of the French empire against the British effort to . provoke dissidence. France would employ all the force permissible under the armistice to assure the integrity ot her colonial empire against provocations. France would reach a military, political, and economic agreement with i Japan, preserving French sovereignty but giving Japan privileges. He added that France owed loyalty to her former enemies, besides scrupulous execution of the armistice,, which was drafted honourably.