MARSEILLES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5596, 24 March 1943, Page 4

MARSEILLES

FRANCE’S GREATEST PORT A COSMOPOLITAN PEOPLE (By F.J.) During the war of 1914-1918 part of Marseilles harbour beqame a British base, and through it poured Dominion troops—lndian, African, Australian, and New Zealand. In this war the once-proud Nazis fear that history will repeat itself—though an Allied landing in Marseilles would have a new significance —so the bulldozer is at work in the streets of Marseilles. The bustle of this never-quiet town will be overtoned by the crash of falling masonry and the clear Mediterranean air filled with the dust of the shattered homes of the people. What manner of city is Marseilles ? That it is the third largest city in France, apd the greatest port, one can learn from any book. That it specialises in the extraction of olive oil and the manufacture of soap—an art introduced in antiquity from Savona and Genoa—we already knew, for before the war banished them we used these products themselves. But what f the restless, colourful life of this most cosmopolitan of ports ? An International Stream

The people of Marseilles are darkhaired, flashing-eyed, robust, and impetuous. A tram conductor with a gay scarf wound round his neck would make a fitting subject for a Van Gogh. The town itself, existing for commerce rather than art, though new and spacious, is not particularly distinctive. But along the Cannebiere, the wide main boulevard connecting with the Vieux Port, flows a gaily coloured, international stream. To sit in one of the big glassed-in cafes and watch it pass is the experience of a life-time. It is the Old Harbour which gives the town its distinctive character. There is the famous Quai des 'Beiges and the maze of streets running off on each side. Narrow, steep, dark, with dead rats and uncleared refuse lying in their central gutters, there is something sinister and frightening about these back streets. With a population drawn from every part of the world, and particularly the hotblooded south, there is a real feeling of violence in the air. Knives flash out in small cafes—seamen ashore are never the calmest and most prudent of men—and men are found shot or stabbed in narrow streets. It was before the big new post office, near the entrance to the Old Harbour, that King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Foreign Minister Barthou were assassinated.

The Marseilles police will tell you not to walk near dark doorways at night, and not to give a light if asked to do so—a method sometimes employed as a prelude to swift robbery and attack. It would be wrong, however, to think that the whole life of the port is thus violent arid squalid. Among the forty thousand souls rendered homeless by the Germans there will be thousands of good, solid-living French fisherfolk and sailors’ families, courageous, hard-working, if passionate, people, like those whom the French novelist Marcel Pagnol brought to life for his fellow-country-men in the films “ Marius ” and “ Fanny.” Paris and London audiences have laughed and wept at the portrayal by the great French actor Raimu of the bluff Marseillaise.

City of Contrasts But Marseilles is essentially a city, of contrasts. It is strange to walk down a narrow street in France and hear, from the dim recesses of some bar, the wailing notes of Oriental music. In one such narrow street lived the Algerians, the workers who in peace-time came over to work in the sugar refineries. All the grocers’ shops in the quarter displayed the meal—a sort of reddish maize—on which these frugal people chiefly lived. The story of these Algerians is a tragic one. Working in unhealthy occupations, living frugally and miserably, their one aim was to save enough to return to their families and buy a piece of land. But often when they returned they were infected by the white scourge of consumption and the plot of ground they themselves occupied was very small. No one who has seen Marseilles will forget the Vieux Port—four and fivestory warehouses and wharves on three sides, masts and gaily-coloured little ships bobbing up and down all along the quays; the whole framed by the great transporter bridge which you cannot cross when the Mistral is really blowing. On the cobbled quays is a fishwife in sombre black clothes so common yet so strange in these southern sun and laughter-loving countries. She wears a pair of bright purple woollen knee socks and carries a basket of shellfish—all the many varieties that go into the world-fam-ous Marseilles dish, “ bouillabaise ” (half fish-sew, half broth, welded together b yolive oil and potatoes). A mule cart, driven by a red-fezzed Al-

gerian soldier., clatters past. A highranking Arab, commanding white and scarlet, glides along silently. On the quays, right among the ships, are squat, tanned, and grizzled sailormen from all over the world, some with limbs lost in battles whose names make history. Such was the Old Harbour of Marseilles in peace—a fund of colour and interest for every artist.

From the basin it is possible to take a little boat out to the sombre Chateau dTf. Many will remember Edmond Dantes and the Abbe Faria of Dumas’ “ Monte Cristo.” This is an historic monument, and the Germans will probably fortify it. Beyond, on the dazzling white rocks, is the quarantine The brilliance and savageness of thees rocks alone would show that Marseilles was the gateway to Africa. They are Africa lapping against the shores of France. On the return journey from the Chateau d’lf, across the blue but often stormy waters of the Mediterranean, one sees, aloft, the great basilica of

Not re Dame de la Garde. Standing 150 feet above the summit of the hill, its 30-foot spire topped by a gilded statue of the Virgin, it is the last thing the sailor sees on leaving port; it is the first to greet him on his return. Small wonder the church is filled with miniature ships—votive offerings of sailors from all over the world.

All the great liners called at Marseilles, though no longer at the Old Port. Schooners laden with oranges, coastal boats with marble, brigs, barques—every kind of ship—lay at anchor there. It is not surprising that Conrad, himself a mariner, and one of the greatest of sea writers, should know Marseilles. In “ The Mirror of the Sea ” he describes a seaman being knocked overboard and says he was “ steeped to the chin in the waters of the Old Harbour, a decoction of centuries of marine refuse.” The Hour of Liberation No doubt .about it, the Old Harbour, like many another picturesque place, was insanitary and often unhealthy.

As in the picturesque byways of Paris many will have coughed out their lungs with tuberculosis. But what the Germans are now doing to Marseilles and the people of the city is to perform a major operation without an anaesthetic, and the surgeon is. one whom the people neither want nor trust. Besides, the Germans are not concerned with French health or slum clearance: their concern is with Allied landings. Not so far from Marseilles along the once beautiful Cote Blue (now bristling with German guns) is Toulon, where the French went down in tragic smoke. Th A Marssellaise do not forget that. When the hour of liberation sounds the Germans will find the spirit of these' sturdy and hot-blooded southerners a harder nut to crack. They may tear down homes and public buildings, destroy the most picturesque port in the world, but they cannot crush the resentful spirit of these dispossessed seamen and fisherfolk with a bulldozer. *