FREE FRENCH PROTEST

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 107, 1 November 1941, Page 9

FREE FRENCH PROTEST

NAZI MASSACRES

WIDE OBSERVANCE OF SILENCE

OTHERS JOIN IN

LONDON, October 31

In London this afternoon General de Gaulle, the Free French leader, led the five minutes' silence of protest of all French people everywhere against the Nazi massacres in France. The Free French leader and members of his National Committee stood to attention for five minutes in the Cabinet room at the general's headquarters, while in the building and throughout Britain Free French soldiers, sailors, airmen, and women auxiliaries did likewise.

No reports have yet been received of the way in which the protest was observed in France itself.

A message from Cairo says that the five minutes' silence was strictly observed there, hot only by the Free French, but by free Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs, and Poles. At the British Embassy the Union Jack flew at half-mast from the beginning of the silence period until sunset. Flags on British and Allied warships at Alexandria flew at half-mast, and seven interned Vichy warships also lowered their flags. The silence was also observed at Singapore-and at Shanghai. A few hours before the silence the German-controlled Paris radio stated that the bait offered by the Nazi commander in France had been swallowed by certain persons, who had given information about the killing of the German officers at Nantes and Bordeaux.