FEELING IN SYRIA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 196, 21 July 1941, Page 6

FEELING IN SYRIA

VICHY INFLUENCE SEEN

(Roc. 12.35 p.m.) LONDON. July 20. Thirteen hundred Allied officers and men who were taken prisoner in the Syrian campaign have reached Baalbeck from camps in North Syria. The first contingent included Australians taken prisoner c.t Mezzo arid Merj lyun. The men said they wero well treated, but the food was indifferent. It is understood that about twenty officers taken to France arc being returned to Syria. Allied troops oeenpy all the towns of Syria and Lebanon except Tripoli, which is reserved lor the Vichy army pending repatriation. A notice has; been published in the newspapers in-, viting Frenchmen desiring to enrol; with the Free French to report at Army Headquarters. ' Tlie Daily Telegraph’s Syria corres-, pondent said the publication at, Beirut of statements by Atarshal Retain | and General Deutz provoked bitter | comment, Alarslial Retain said I 1 ranee j was about to suffer an eclipse in the Levant. General Dentz declared the armistice terms would have been more favourable but for the influence of General de Gaulle’s supporters. Senior Vichy officials about to hand over their jobs permitted the publication of the statements. Their action emphasises the danger of allowing \ ichy supporters to remain in the country. The continued presence of anti-Britishers may result in the sapping of Allied authority, with a corresponding increase in Fifth Column activity. There is no longer any reason why Dentz and his staff, who declared they recogniso only the authority of Vichy, should be allowed to remain in Syria. The Times’s Beirut correspondent declares the German military victories recounted over the German radio have dazzled the Moslems. They are also momentarily afraid to collaborate with the British, following the German propaganda that the Germans are returning to Syria in September and threatening drastic treatment to those helping the British.