PARIS PRESS SCANDAL

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 194, 18 July 1939, Page 7

PARIS PRESS SCANDAL

FURTHER IMPLICATIONS. REFLECTION ON CABINET. REPERCUSSIONS LIKELY. (United Press Association.. —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received July 18, 9.20 a.m. ' LONDON, July 17. The Daily Worker’s correspondent says that responsible Paris newspapers allege there are three Cabinet Ministers implicated in the Nazi spy and propaganda plots in France. The wife of one of these Cabinet Ministers had close contact with an expelled Nazi named Abetz. The Daily "Worker declares that any attempt by financial interests to restrict the coming inquiry will be difficult because certain Democrats possess documentary and other evidence which, will startle not only Paris, Berlin and Rome, but will have grave repercussions in London and New York.

PRESS INDICTED. SCATHING AMERICAN COMMENT. M. DALADIEK’S DECREES. The present purge in France under the control ot tiie Premier (AJ. Daladier) ot a widespread network ot Nazi espionage and bribery, in which two French journalists are already under arrest, is stated to have resulted principally from an article published in the Uruled States. It was recently reported that the first hint of the military swoop pending on Nazi agents came at the end of June, when Luce, tlie proprietor of the American magazine Time, was sued by a syndicate of Paris journalists for publishing a report that Parits newspapers. were receiving money from foreign countries, and that the Paris Press was “the sewer of the world.” The Time article referred to read in part as follows: —

“The Paris Press has long been the sewer system of world journalism. Few are the Parisian newsmen who cannot be bought, rare is the newspaper unwilling to he ’subsidised/ Not only docs the French Government, which always maintains a secret fund, pass out geenrous pay cheques to writers and editors, but foreign Governments also contribute.

“During the Ethiopian crisis of 1955 the Italian Government bought a few editorial pages. The way some prominent Paris newspapers have handled their German ‘newts’ recently suggests that slush funds from the Third Reich arc also being passed around. In pot and kettle fashion. Leftist editors have cried that the Rightist Press lived on funds from Germany and Italy, while Rightist editors pictured the Leftist Preps getting gold from Moscow.

“Last week Premier Edouard Daladier struck tenor into the heart* of foreign-sub sidised journalists of both Loft and Right. Using his wide decree nowors. the Premier’s Government pub'ished a law which: “(1) Prohibited defamation or slander promoting hatred ‘against any group of persons belonging to any particular race or religion’—i.e., against the Jews, a specialty of the Reich-subsidised Press. “(2) Made it unlawful to receive from foreign countries funds for ‘anti-national propaganda.’ “(3) Provided that any funds received for publicity campaigns, directly or indirectly, must be reported in eight days. “Contending that the Press decrees did not ‘in any respect alter the fundamental notion of liberty,’ the Daladier Government insisted that tjie legislation was necessary to- ‘prevent certain campaigns of suspicious origin tending to weaken the morale of the nation.’ ”