WILD WEST REVIVED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 January 1944, Page 4

WILD WEST REVIVED

RESISTANCE TO NAZIS IN FRANCE. ACTIVITIES OF PARTISAN ARMY. The Berne correspondent of “Aftonbladet” reports that life in HauteSavoie, France, nowadays resembles that of the Wild West, of old. All German efforts to maintain peace and order have failed. Nobody has the slightest respect for the life and property of others, especially if the others are believed to be traitors. The number of victims of assault increases daily, and the reprisals are increasingly grim. Jungle law dictates the rules of fighting between partisans and their opponents. A new system has been started for guarding railway lines, whereby guards are placed at every 100 metres. 'The guards are aged between 20 and 60 and are taken from the population. But assaults continue, often near the guard points, and people are killed and depots destroyed without the guards being able or willing to intervene. The Vichy Government has decided to launch a large-scale action against the partisans, and 16,000 Gardes Mobiles with motorised units and German patrols are combing the Thorens forest. Four hundred German soldiers with machine-guns and armoured cars staged a large raid against patriots near Chamonix, but the results were disappointing as only seven suspects were captured, The partisans are steadily recruiting new men, and many high officers of the French Armistice Army are organising the partisan army, which has its own secret headquarters and possesses machine-guns, mortarsand heavier armour. The foregoing is particularly interesting because it unknowingly bears witness to two facts. The first is. that resistance is the -work of everyone, not merely the men in hiding bearing arms but the whole population. Guards placed every 100 metres along the railway lines are useless because they turn a blind eye to the movements of the patriots, and it is impossible to prove their complicity. The second is that if 400 German soldiers with maclfine-guns in an attempt to round up the partisans at Chamonix only succeeded in arresting seven it confirms reports of complicity among the Germans themselves, who through fear are beginning to buy safety. German soliders of the army of occupation are not the best of the German army. Among them are old men who have little faith in Hitler and highly impressionable youths of a tender age who are easily scared among the rocks and trees of the Savoie region, and they have been told by tracts that if they do not fire the hiding French sharpshooters will,not fire on them.”