HITLER UNITES FRENCH

Southland Times, Issue 23931, 25 September 1939, Page 2

HITLER UNITES FRENCH

Nation Pulls Itself Together

WIDE SUPPORT FOR M. DALADIER

“We owe a good deal to Hitler,” This remark, or something like it, was to be heard pretty often during a motor tour up and down the provincial part of France, wrote Sir Arthur Willert in The New York Times at the beginning of last month.

The first time I heard it was in the hall of a luxury hotel on the Mediterranean. A banquet was about to round out a religious ceremony of importance. The Papal Nunico from Paris and various Bishops all in their full regalia were scattered about talking with French generals and admirals and with officials of the French Republic. This fraternization of Church and State was strange to one who had been educated in French politics years ago, when priest and politician were not on speaking terms. I said this to a Frenchman by my side. “Yes,” he answered, “Hitler is working well for us in some ways.” The last time I heard this sentiment was at Havre, when we were taking ship back to England. I asked the man who was clearing our motor-car how trade was. He was depressed about trade and worried about war. “But,” he added, “there is a good side to it all. Those people (the dictators) are making us pull ourselves together.” ENTERPRISE IS HELD UP Everywhere, of course, one finds anxiety and irritation over the war menace. Enterprise not of the “preparedness” brand is being held up; garage men put their money under their beds instead of into new plants; head-waiters remain head-waiters instead of branching out into hotelkeeping; hotel keepers worry about their season; farmers about labour if mobilization comes; families are haunted by the fear of separation and I death, and so on. But behind it all, one is conscious of a great nation finding itself. France, when all is said and done, has not had a happy time since the last war ended. She has been unsure of herself, of hei’ position in Europe, of the value of British friendship in case of trouble, of her whole future. The future is as unsure as ever. But in the provinces, at any rate, one no longer feels that it is feared. Not for the first time in their history, the French people are responding to a threat to their right to live their own life and to enjoy their own civilization in their own way. They are meeting the German menace with the same spirit that sent their ancestors of the Revolution out in half-trained armies triumphantly to throw back the attack of the European monarchies when they tried to restore the Bourbons at Versailles and recover France for the monarchical trades union. Two years ago we motored into Pans i from Germany and tumbled upon the 14th of July “preparedness” parade staged by the Blum Government. It was a good parade. Tanks and guns made the ground quiver and roar; the fighting personnel was impressive; the crowds large and enthusiastic. But one I did not feel that it quite represented i the national spirit of those days. It was ahead of it. The people, as one had glimpsed them on the way across France, had appeared more concerned with the sit-down strikes, the 40-hour week, holidays with pay and the other projects and problems of the Blum “new deal.’ Distrustful of the Germans the French always have been and always will be, but the urgent need for a hundred per cent, response to the immense mobilization of militant nationalism across the Rhine had not yet been grasped. REPRESENTED NATIONAL SPIRIT i j Premier Daladier’s 14th of July this year, a far bigger defence demonstration than that of his predecessor, did represent the national spirit. One had only to be in provincial France during the days after it to realize that. The Press, radio and films played it up for all it was worth. Readers and listeners responded. Men pointed to the photographs of the parade and cheering crowds and said: “This is the real thing; it is a popular demonstration; it shows what we want; we hope it will show Hitler what he will get, if he forces us to fight.” M. Daladier, one felt, is nearer being a national leader than any of his predecessors in recent years. One felt it again when the German gold revelations broke in Paris. The rumour ran that arrests had been made by M. Daladier and the general staff against the wishes of Foreign Minister Bonnet and other suspected “appeasers.” It was whispered that a big scandal lurked unrevealed in the background. Always distrustful of the Paris politicians, the provinces were inclined to believe the worst. But would the worst ever be known? Would M. Daladier dare defy the politicians, big business and their friends of the Press who would want to stifle a scandal discreditable to the existing order of things? One left France feeling that if M. Daladier took a strong line in this or any other direction for the good of France, the country would support him and he would have “arrived” as the national leader for whom the French have long looked in vain. NATION BEHIND DALADIER In his preparedness work, M. Daladier has already a solid nation behind him. The doubts and recriminations of the Blum regime have been swept away. The Blum “new deal” is not dead—there is too much good in it for it to die—but most of it is in cold storage and will not reappear while the national emergency lasts. For the present, few are ready to let the forty-hour week or holidays with pay and other social reforms stand in the way of rearmament. As she tackles preparedness France is congratulating herself that, unlike the English-speaking democracies, she has been able to reconcile permanent conscription with democracy. Somebody in one of the remotest and poorest of the departments was telling me about the local situation. Everything, he said, was ready, military mobilization, food supplies, hospitals, the billeting of the department’s quota of refugees from the Rhine departments and Paris, in this case 150,000 persons. I registered admiration.

“But you must remember,” he said, “how much easier it all is for us with our habit of national military service. Each of us knows his place.” Another thing that stimulates the French war effort is the realization that the more effective it is the less likely the dictators are to fight. . If the first question which that travelling Britisher learned to expect concerned his opinion of the prospects of peace or war, the second was: “Why does your Prime Minister not take Winston Churchill into his Cabinet?” Every Frenchman realizes that the best hope for peace is the strongest possible democratic peace-front. They blame the communists for the strikes and troubles of two years ago. Also many French families have their little bundles of worthless Imperial Russian