REYNAUD AS WITNESS

Evening Star, Issue 25566, 20 August 1945, Page 4

REYNAUD AS WITNESS

WHY FRAME FELL

' STAR'S ’ EXCLUSIVE STORY COMMENCES WEDNESDAY

“ France to-day must stand her trial,” says Paul Reynaud, Premier of France in fateful 1940. “ And I stand forward as a witness.”

It is highly dramatic evidence that the ‘ Star ’ will publish from Reynaud’s memoirs, commencing in Wednesday’s issue. It is frank \ to the point of sensation. It reveals events and negotiations of which the world has so far gone in ignorance.

Read it, and understand why France fell.

Reynaud had little hope that his record would ever see the light of day. At any hour during those long months of imprisonment in Vichy or German gaols he might have been taken out by Gestapo guards and shot. At any moment he might have been caught at his task and all his documents destroyed.

With him in his cell was one 'other prisoner—Michel Clemenceau, a son of the legendary Tiger of France. Clemenceau was his ardent collaborator. It was he who kept . vigil hour after hgur at the cell door, while Reynatid studied and wrote. It was he who would help bury the manuscript in the prison grounds in the hope that should the worst happen it might yet be found and given to the worjd. But the worst did not happen. The Reynaud record was preserved in full.

It will be published in the * Star ’ (as far as is possible), after the first instalment on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.