PART FRANCE WILL PLAY

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21242, 12 October 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

PART FRANCE WILL PLAY

General de Gaulle’s Answer :: Strong Sympathies With Movement

JOAN OF ARC’S banner flies in England, saluted by English soldiers, and hoisted to the strains of the “ Marseillaise.”

(By Mr G. Ward Price, in the London Daily Mail)

that their own incompetence had brought about. “ But the real France still exists. When winter comes, and the Germans begin to tighten the screw, starving the French people to feed themselves, Hitler will find that France is by no means an easy country to hold in bondage.” Behind the Times The first attribute of General Charles de Gaulle to impress a visitor is his natural modesty. There is no lack of self-confidence in his bearing, which, thanks to his magnificent physique, is unusually impressive. But his manner is marked by unaffected geniality, and he talks with that lucid ease of expression that is characteristic of nearly all French General Staff officers. I was anxious to hear an explanation of the collapse of the French Army from this officer, of whom M. Reynaud, as Premier, thought so highly that on June 6 he made him Under-Secretary of State for War. “ It was not the army that was defeated, but the High Command,” he said. “ They had never grasped the fundamental fact that there is a new technique oi warfare. They were fighting with the weapons and methods of 20 years ago. They thought in terms ol ‘ fronts ’ : there never was a * front,’ properly so called, during the operations in France.

There, in less than a score of words, you have three of the most striking historical improbabilities on record.

Their peculiarity reflects the curious character of our present relations with France.

Never before has London looked so like a French garrison town. In a walk along Piccadilly or up Regent Street you will meet uniforms of all three of the French Services—air, sea and land.

"What are present conditions in the occupied parts of France, where many of these men have their homes ? I had the opportunity of putting that question to General de Gaulle, the Commander-in-Chief of the French forces in this country. He controls special sources of information and his answer was clear and confident.

“ The mood of the French people just now is one of relaxation and comparative acquiescence,” said the general. “ The people are relieved that the fighting is over for the time being. Separated families are coming together again. The German troops have been ordered to behave themselves. The walls are placarded with pictures of smiling members of the Army of Occupation carrying French children in their arms, with the legend, ‘ Refugees ! You can trust the German soldier ! ’ “ Among the Germans themselves, however, there are signs of discouragement and depression. Many of them visit French homes in search of sympathy. Their hosts listen to British broadcasts in their presence without interference. Cases of suicide by German soldiers are frequent.” I expressed surprise at this. No Permanent Sign “ The same thing occurred among the French troops whom Napoleon led to far parts of Europe,” explained the general. “ These Germans are homesick and obsessed by the thought that the war may last a long time. It would be a mistake to look on such symptoms as a sign of permanent demoralisation.” “ What part can your country play in the future developments of this war ? ” I asked the man who, though sentenced to death by a Government whose leaders were once his comrades-in-arms, now represents all that is left of the liberties of France.

“ The old generals to whom the national defence was entrusted had long been too inert to realise that they would be confronted with the new weapons and methods of mechanical warfare. They founded their confidence on masses of men, whereas modern war is made with masses of material, manned by highly trained experts. They had not the requisite resiliency of mind to recast their plans, to abandon their precopceived ideas.” Forty-nine years old, and the son of a professor at a French Catholic college, de Gaulle has had an unusually wide military experience. He began as an infantry officer, serving as a subaltern in a regiment commanded, oddly enough, by Marshal Petain, then a colonel. In the last war he was wounded three times, on the third occasion at Verdun, where he was picked up by a German patrol. Five times he tried to escape from the prisoner-of-war camp in which he was confined. Studied By Germans After the Armistice, though still suffering from his latest wound, he returned to the army and served under the direct orders of General Weygand when he took command of the Polish Army that successfully resisted the Bolshevist invasion of 1921. Besides being employed on the staff, and commanding first an infantry battalion, then a regiment, a brigade, and finally a division of tanks, he has travelled widely in the Near and Middle East. His books on mechanised warfare, disastrously neglected in his own country, were studied with the closest attention by the German Army. A keen horseman and good player of tennis and bridge, as well as a recognised authority on tank strategy and tactics, General de Gaulle represents the best type of French officer. He is a worthy leader of the campaign of Free Frenchmen to restore his historic country’s traditions of liberty and victory.

“It will be the bridgehead by which the British Army and. the French forces forming here will one day return to the Continent to free the peoples now in bondage there,” answered General de Gaulle.

“ Remember,” he went on, “ that though I am almost the only senior officer representing the French cause in England, there were very many others who would have come here if they could. It was my good fortune to be able to get away.

“ The sympathies of those others are still with us. Do not make the mistake of confusing the present French Government, or the French Press or wireless, with the people of France. My nation was badly led by old men who did not understand the changes that have come about in modern war. They dared not risk their personal reputations by going on fighting after the defeats