UNOCCUPIED FRANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 156, 30 December 1940, Page 8

UNOCCUPIED FRANCE

TALK OF INVASION

PETAIN MAY LEAVE

FLIGHT TO AFRICA

LONDON, December 29

The Lisbon correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" says that German forces are reported to be on the point of invading unoccupied France, and planes are waiting at Vichy to convey Marshal Petain and his Government to Africa should Germany move.

Several independent sources confirm reports of the embarkation of French troops at Marseilles for Morocco and Tunisia.

The German radio says that two influential members of the French Government who were going to Morocco from Vichy aboard a plane were shot down at La Linea, Spain, on December 25.

LONDON, December 28. Obscurity still cloaks the French situation, but all sources indicate that members of the Vichy Government continue strongly to resist the German attempts to exceed the provisions of the armistice.

M. Philippe Barnes, former editor of "Le Matin" and "Paris Soir," in an article in the "Sunday Times," says that the Germans are striving to impose on Vichy measures which would place the French Empire in their hands before the Free French and British forces made decisive progress. "Herr Hitler will not attempt appropriation of the French Empire, because he knows that the empire will surrender to Britain rather than accept German domination," he adds.

The Free French news agency says that the Minister of the Navy, Admiral Darlan, has conveyed to Herr Hitter a refusal by the Vichy Government to surrender the French fleet. The Lisbon correspondent o.l£ the Associated Press of Great Britain says a number of French naval unite have already gone to North Africa from Toulon.