TURNED DOWN

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 101, 25 October 1940, Page 8

TURNED DOWN

GERMAN DEMANDS

VICHY FIRM

HITLER AND PETAIN

MEET

LONDON, October 24 The German wireless has given further details of tonight's meeting between Hen; Hitler and Marshal Pclain. The meeting took place in Herr Hitler's special train at a small station in occupied France just over the demarcation line. Marshal Petain drove to the meeting place with M. Laval, and was given military honours both on arrival and departure. I At the entrance to the station Mar- i shal Petain and M. Laval were re-j ccived by Herr yon Ribbentrop and General yon Keitel, and were escorted to the train, where Herr Hitler was waiting. After the talks, which lasted two hours, and which were also attended by Herr yon Piibbentrop and M. Laval, Herr Hitler escorted Marshal Petain to his car. This meeting confirms the reports that M. Laval was sent back to Vichy with a request that Marshal Petain himself should have a talk with Herr Hitler. Various statements from the Vichy side have indicated hopes of naming the release of nearly 2,000,000 French prisoners of war and permis-| sion for the Government to return to Paris. Several reports today have agreed that the German demands have been very much toned down and that the Germans now desire above all the use of naval and air bases in France and in French North African territory. The increasing firmness of the Vichy Government against being driven into hostile action against Britain may have I'orced Herr Hitler to give up his cherished hopes and put forward less stringent demands. Nazi statements suggest that Herr Hitler's interview with General Franco i lias led in the same way to a big re-j duction in the German demands on Spain. Herr Hitler was accompanied to the Spanish frontier by a drafting expert of the German Foreign Office, and this suggests that Herr Hitler sought General Franco's signature to some sort of agreement. Tonight the Lille radio was complaining that certain people in France still believe not only in the probability but in the certainty of a British victory. This admission of pro-British feeling probably applies to the unoccupied as well as the occupied zone of France.