REMARKABLE SPEECH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 227, 23 August 1940, Page 8

REMARKABLE SPEECH

DESERVED DEFEAT. FRENCHMAN’S ASSERTION. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copy right.) Received August 23, 1 p.m. VICHY, Aug. 22. “Britain’s refusal to lift tlie blockade against France is an act of hostility worse than the shelling of the French warships at Oran,” declared the Foreign Minister (M. Baudouin), in a violent broadcast attack on Mr Churchill. He added that it wax inhuman and unworthy of a Christian country. “Who doesn’t feel the blockade that throws its shadow far into the future? A world died on May 10. We have better things to do than regret it. Nations of all continents will be bound in the evergrowing solidarity from which Mr Churchill is excluding England by not allowing a great pnrt of Europe to be sufficiently fed. “Mr Churchill reproaches France for giving up the fight. We are not weary of repeating the truth ill opposition to repeated lies. In June the' French Army—dispersed, encircled, and decimated—bad only their . breasts with which to resist the invader. Mr Churchill says two million English soldiers are ready for battle. I affirm without fear of denial that in June only two British divisions, totalling 50,000 men, were fighting by our side. One-tenth of the British Air Force were flying at long intervals • over an ever wider battlefield How can Mr Churchill say, we had sufficient forces outside France to continue tlie struggle when overseas soldiers did not total a single army? If he wishes to justify the grave Somaliland reverse, will lie bo able to convince anyone that the garrison of 5000 at Jibuti would be sufficient? Who would believe our four North African divisions and the 60,000 stationed in Syria would have continued to fight?

“All the fighting men we questioned made one reproach against the former French Government—it was that they were too long drawing the lesson from events.

“We were conquered because we did not deserve victory. For Mr Churchill the crime of the men of Vichy is tliut they did not abandon French territory and did not continue the struggle in the colonies, but their honour is that at no time have they dissociated the country’s leaders from the country itself. To leave France would be behaving as cowards whilst pretending to be heroes. “If the Government is blamed for taking the painful armistice decision, it should have been by the fighting men, not Mr Churchill,- for Which mason France docs not expect salvation from Britain. Franco expects to herself achieve rebirth.” FAMINE FORESEEN.

M. .Baudouin said the blockade “is a terrible foreboding of famine. France needs the products of her colonies in order to live All tilings we at present need and are likely to need still more next winter arc accumulating in overseas ports, because the English Fleet will not permit them to pass. “I sent proposals to London on August 2, and alter three weeks’ silence Mr Churchill replied that no discussion, was possible with the French Government. The horrors of battle may ho forgotten, but (the memory of a child and its mother suffering brands itself on the memory of generations. Who docs not feel that this pitiless arm strikes first at the small and weak, and hits the vanquished before exhausting the victor.”