Vichy’s Choice of Evils

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 108, 8 May 1941, Page 6

Vichy’s Choice of Evils

TEMPORARY CAPTIVITY OR NATIONAL ENSLAVEMENT

(British Official Wireless.-) Received Wednesday, 9.20 p.m.

RUGBY, May €. While sympathising with Vichy’s problem of choosing between further concessions to the Nazis and the pathetic continuance of the spectacle of large numbers of able-bodied young Frenchmen in German prison camps, the limes insists that the people of France should remember that howei'er specious the Nazi proposals are, they amount to no more than an offer to shorten the captiA’ity of their sons in order that they may help toward the lasting enslavement of their country.

The Times continues that, # according to reports from the United States, Admiral Darlan has probably been sent homo from Paris with peremptory demands for further submission to the Nazi will. Under threats that Vichy has little power to resist, unoccupied France is to be harnessed to Hitler’s Avar machine. By the terms of the armistice he cunningly limited the extent of his responsibility for the affairs of a starving aud resentful people while providing himself with ample instruments for bending them at any time to servo his purposes. The Times concludes that while young Frenchmen remain imprisoned Hitler is precluded by the Geneva Convention of 1929 from employing them directly in any war industry, but he has discovered that he can use them indirectly as a most powertul lever in his plot to force the A\ar industries of France to work for him.