Reign of Terror in France

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 208, 2 September 1941, Page 5

Reign of Terror in France

Anti-Axis Sentiment Growing ITALIANS CONTINUALLY BEING ILL-TREATED United Press Association—Bv Electric Telegraph—Copyright. Received Monday, 8.30 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 1. The continuing of arrests throughout | Fiance indicate the beginning of u i reign of terror, says the Times correspondent on the French frontier. The occupation authorities are trying to control the use of the radio and shortwave receivers have been banned in Paris. The Swiss newspaper Bund quotes the estimate of the Vichy Minister of the Interior that there are 30,000 Communists in occupied France, of /whom .10,000 have been interned and adds: * 1 One third of the former Communist deputies and senators are held prisoner and the others are reported to be workling under false names forming new , groups with their headquarters continually on the move. Radicals, Coaillists nnd do Gaulleists are unable to form organised parties wherefor the Communists are taking the lead in opposition to the Government. The Italian newspaper Regime Fas* Icista says the majority of .Frenchmen I are pro-British and anti-German. This sentiment is growing. There is a vast ; underground struggle going on in Paris i against the Axis. German and Italian . book shops have been smashed arid 'ltalians are continually ill-treated. ; The British United Press Vichy 'correspondent reports that the GovernIment has decreed that French seamen 1 deserting from merchantmen in foreign ports are liable to ten years’ imprisonMarshal Petain addressed the new JFrench Legion composed of veterans of | this and the last war in what is regardled as an attempt to convert the Legion into a political army. He said: “Help me to rally the hesitant and discontented Frenchmen to us and silence thoir criticisms. You are the faithful on 'whom the Government, Darlan and J, Jlean.”