Nazi Grip On France Tightens

Northern Advocate, 3 January 1941, Page 3

Nazi Grip On France Tightens

The defeat of France is not over. Reports on the meeting of Reichsfuhrer Hitler and Marshal Petain indicate that this defeat will be continuous and increasingly ignominious, as the Nazi plan against Britain may require, says the “Christian Science Monitor.”

Official secrecy clothes the meeting. But that France has been “persuaded” —by threats—to co-operate more closely with the German war machine seems certain. Apparently both the men of Vichy and the Nazis recognise that it would be highly dangerous to their schemes to attempt to lead the French people openly to war against Britain now. But if, as some despatches state, the French are to permit German use of their bases while France protects them against the British, the Vichy regime will be at war with Britain in all but name.

The possibility of Vichy thus giving important aid to the Nazis is sufficient to have caused Pan-American leaders to prepare to take action with regard to France’s possessions in the Western Hemisphere. What further aid Germany may be squeezing out of the Vichy group can only be guessed. It could include French warships still in existence, and French planes. In return the Nazis appear to be making gestures of reciprocity, permitting the French a passage to Bordeaux and moving the line of occupation back nearer to Paris. Further Nazi Encroachment. Whether such gestures will divert the French people’s attention from the further encroachment by the Nazis on French prerogatives is a question. Herr Hitler, with the aid of M. Laval, seems to be directing French foreign policy now. Evidently an elaborate groundwork for a new attack on the British Empire is being laid. It may be carried out in fields as far apart as Syria: to threaten Palestine and the Suez Canal —and Dakar: to menace another British trade route. A German move into West Africa, however, will be of more than passing interest to the United States and its Latin-American collaborators in hemisphere defence. With Bourbon-like disregard for new values, the Nazis seem to regard Spain as a possible offset to United States influence in Latin America. And there are reports to the effect that Herr Hitler has been making presents to Spain at France’s expense, as in Morocco.

Pathetic Picture. The picture is necessarily blurred, by diplomatic complications and by secrecy. But one feature of it stands out in pathetic clarity: All that the Vichy regime can do for France now is to lead it from defeat to defeat. France still lives under an armistice, with a peace treaty yet to be “earned.” But by how many more capitulations to Nazi violence only the French people will decide.