Marck 13.
That Germany is doing her utmost to embroil Great Britain with the Vichy Govern—ment over the question of the relaxation of the British blockade maybe taken for granted. Nothing would suit her book better than that Admiral Darlan should seek to. convoy French supply ships through the blockade, with the British feet using all its strength {o prevent ity for St does not matter upon What pretext it is done, the re-entry of the est of the French Navy into the war in Such 'a manner would Undoubtedly benefit the Germans, even if It did not secure for the French those foodstuffs of which, by reason of German sation alone, France 1s admittedly In such urgent need: The Ger man news agency with an air of injured innocence Is now endeavouring to. persuade the world at large of the very real assistance Germany "claims she is giving both. to occupied and unoccupied France. Quite a umber of various items is quoted showing Assistance alleged to have been given none! of which solve the feeding problem. Twenty-! five thousand tons of iron and steel,—supposing for one moment Germany has indeed supplied it, and there is only the German word to support it,—feeds no hungry bellies. Neither do the. 30,000 tons of fud oil from the German Navy,—unable to use it because of the loss of so many naval vessels. Twenty-five thousand tons of cellulose every three months provide no greater nourishment, What France wants is food, the food that the Germans have looted the country of, ge have requisitioned from unoccupied 'The German news agency states that Paris received 100,000 tons of potatoes, and that France, occupied and unoccupied, will this spring receive a further 450,000.' As food~ stuffs? Every gardener in the world will realize that these will be seed potatoes, for the purpose of helping France to grow' another potato harvest which will be just as certainly seized as it was last autumn, And then again it is alleged that "Two anda half million hundredweight of wheat which the German military administration requisitioned in occupied France have in the meantime been placed at the disposal of the French population." The total seizure of the French harvest last year amounted to 27,000,000 quintals or approximately 54,000,000 cwt,, In other words the German thief has returned to the starving French population 5 per cent, of this foodstuff which formed part of the general swag torn out of the hands of suffering France. How much of the wheat which is thus being returned will also have to be used as seed? It is suggested that practically all of it will have to be so used, for it would be a counsel of desperation to eat it, So when the foodstuffs which the German news agency claims are being returned to France are regarded in their true light, it is clear that they are not really to be used as food, but in preparation for another harvest to almost exclusively to Germany again, It would be idle to detail at length the other German claims of assistance to France, such as the repair of communication: obviously with the idea of being in a bet strategic position to deal with unoccupied France should she prove refractory, or the return of 30,000 French freight cars, because Germany has no further use for them, and France is without goods to transport in them, The fact is that a no more blatantly hypo! tical set of claims could possibly be put fo ward even by such expert hypocrites as the German propaganda machine, Germany is making.-no-eéncession"t6 "hUhiry~ France, which in fact does not increase her future food potential by the time the next harvest comes round. True ince would be the return of all the foodstuffs, the corn, the vegetables, the cattle and the poultry which Germany has seized. But that would be fo expect the thief, out of the goodness of his heart, to return his spoils, Germany boasted that there was enough food in Europe to feed all occupied countries, Either: there is, or there is not, and if there is not the responsibility is that of. Germany, which is now seeking, by playing upon the sympathy, which must be felt for the French in their unfortunate plight, merely another means of breaking the British blockade,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.