Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends France 7940-1944 By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN "¦"NVASION date* me determined by practical con-j aiderationa of weather and wind and tide, not by sentimental associations. But...
...No amount of money could buy or rent an automobile...
...To the attic* staff the word "summer" brings the association "vacation...
...It was then that Marshal Petain, the newly appointed Prime Minister of the government of surrender, pronounced over the radio the Ave fstefui words: "II faiit cesser It combat...
...We want your contributions to count towards the expsasJon of The Nets Leader audience...
...With your tomtrlbrntiou send in the asme* of triendn who ought to read The New Lender and we will...
...2...
...We found a temporary shelter in one of the suburbs of Bordeaux, in the rundown home of a formerly well-to-do family...
...place them en the mnOint but Send In ten dollara and the names of seven friends and we 7 will enter a six-months subscription for each ' of them...
...As late as June 9 (the Germans entered Paris on the Hih) 1 noted in my diary that people were picnicing and feeding the swans in the Bois de Boulogne, the great holiday park of the capital...
...There was an almost hyynotic unwillingness to believe how hopeless the situation on the front had become...
...If Franc* becomes the scene of a pr...
...when the final regime topples, The Nets Leader will have froah political taporta from the "men who've gone bark...
...There will be episodes of devotion and heroism, expressions of the traditional French instinct for the dramatic gesture, the spectsrular phrase to mark an important event...
...Thorp is • convenient .coupon on the...
...BlIT we should only be deceiving ourselves snd letting ourselves in for future disillusionment if we would envisage the liberation of Fiance as proceeding in the hothouse atmosphere of a Hollywood movie...
...One of the job* at which we are hard at work now—and we have no secrets from our readora—is planning s full political snd labor cetersge of poat-inration Europe...
...Apart from the interruptions of food supply that will be an unavoidable consequence of military action, there will be systematic acts of sabotage by the Underground and merciless reprisals by the Germans and by the Vichy police and special guards who** necks are at stake and who will fight perhaps with even more despair than the Germans...
...The years from 1940 until 1944 have been among the most tragic in the history of France...
...These plana mean many additional inanclal burdens, for the paper, burdtma that cannot be tarried without your help...
...Now it is no longer German tanks and German parachutists who have things all their own way...
...It is remarkable, in retrospect, how calm Paris was almost up to the eve of the fall...
...However, we don't want something for nothing...
...The grest majority of Americans and French alike look forward to the liberation of France from the Nazi tyranny as one of the great inspiring developments of the war...
...The old historic town, with its imposing monument to the Girondists, most of whom came from that part of France, was a near approach to bedlam...
...Large numbers of peasant families evacuated, parking as many of their belongings as possible in carts, For a time it seemed that 1 would he immobilized in Paris...
...Thia is what we are planning—among other editorial pro}ectn...
...We are seeking to eVntoear and analyze the maior trtnda which will shape Europe's f*t*re...
...Moat of the daily papers and weekly msgsziaea are interested primarily in the "spot" military news of the moment...
...There will be touching scenes as one hiatoric town after another is wrested from German hands...
...In New York—and in ImuAod and Mexico City—today alt many men who will play loading roles ia thoir countries after tho Na/i« are vanquished...
...For those days sre the slut* from which history is made...
...JAPANESE correspondent whom I hud known in Tokyo gave my wife and myself a "lift" to Tours, temporary seat of the demoralized French Government, in his already overcrowded csr...
...The French tried to console themselves with the idea that, as the Germans had been turned bark at the Mama once, the ssme "miracle" would be repeated...
...The contrast between the fallen France of 1940 and th* storming of Hitler's Fettung Europe in 1944 is especially vivid to me because I lived through the French collapse, getting out of Paris just two days before the Germans came In and crossing the border into Spain on the day when the armistice was signed...
...There is unfortunately every prospect that the Hh...
...whea the Socialista and Peassnts return to Poland, we shall hsve flrst-hsnd reports on the aocial reconstruction there...
...By the night of the 9th the names of the places which were mentioned in the guarded French communiques were close enough to excite a general desire to get away and rumors of the flight of the government to Tours spread like wildfire...
...F.very conveyance imaginable was pressed into service...
...And it's The \eic Lender's job to proeide thst long-range political and social perapectlre which makes meaning out of the helter-skelter daily events of the day...
...I wonder whether General de Gaulle or some leader of the French Underground will take June 17, 1944, as the drsmstie moment to give out the slogsn: "II I ant reeom-mrncer It combat...
...Many ef them sre worming hard drawing up plana for the reconstruction of devsststed arant, the rebuilding of labor unions, the regeneration of European iemot-rtcy...
...although the rumble of guns was ronstsntly becoming more audible and white puffs of smoke indicated intensive anti-aircraft fire quite near the suburbs of the capital...
...YOVR RESFOSSE WJLL DETERMINE HOW FAR THESE PLASsi CAN BE PUT KiTO EFFECT...
...All this is part of the price of liberation and only a small unworthy minority of the French people would wish to remain in servitude to Germany But s reason-able consideration of whst France has suffered and will suffer should affect, so far as possible, our military and political policies...
...Great numbers of people who did not possess automobiles fled on bicycles or simply walked out of Paris, taking th* rotds to the South...
...but this, time it brought the word "'mission...
...It was impossible to get on trains in these last days of Paris and no cars were to be hired...
...To the editorial stsff, it ased to bring the word "doldrums...
...But it is peculiarly appropriate that the same month, June, which marked ihe fall of France in 1940 should mark the beginning of the liberation of France in 1944...
...Above sll French politirsl susceptibilities mast be respected snd there must not be the shadow of Instiled saspieisa that military controls are being exploited for politirsl ends...
...There was even a fair-sized audience at the opera "Mignon...
...We need your contributions, your ten, Ave, and single dollar hilla...
...aration *f Frsuumwill be far lusftjflanllj m human lljaa ami far mere dostructiv* than^e* the conquest ef France...
...All Paris was trying to crowd into it...
...longed and desperate battle, fought with all the r...
...When Franco falls, we ahull have top-notth, on-the-spot, political correspondence from Spain...
...Then a long and doleful caravan of refugees, most of them with little idea of where they were fleeing, began to appear...
...We had no sooner reached Tours thsn the government, sfter a futile conference between Prime Minister Paul Reynaud and Winston Churchill, who flew to Tours from England and found the city so disorganized that he had to find his own means of transportation to the centre, moved on to Bordeaux...
...There was not yet a serious shortage of food but it was almost impossible to get meals, because every restaurant and cafe was crowded to rapacity at all hours...
...While only the small minority of Frenchmen who ' have committed themselves beyond recall to the policy of "collaboration" can be regarded as pro-German, there are rifts and cleavages among the French people, partly along old political and social lines, partly because of differences of sttitude that dat* back to the beginning of the war, and still esrlier...
...Pillaged by the Germans and subjected to blockade, this naturally fertile land hss been given over to hunger which has probably lowered the vitality of the town population to a point where they are almost incapable of vigorous action, with a few exceptions...
...Tear it out and send you ionlribution to - Leader Sustaining fund — today...
...Bat we need your help...
...Being of an obstinately unnieclianirsl disposition I had always found the idea of driving an automobile as alien as the operation of a Diesel engine...
...Among these men are the Isadora of Europe's labor, liberal, and socialist movements...
...sources of motor*, war, th* world will be the poorer for the loss of many irreplaceable monuments of th* mist Th* sufferings of the civilian population will inevitably be aevere...
...These men mill write tor Tho New Leader, from their homelands, on the dramatic work of creating a new society out of thoir war-torn world...
...f ROM THi BDITOHS /Word association is a fascinating game, and in a magaxine...
...One ef the first rfm*U* the clouded early days of the invasion was that tiles), one of the oldest Norman towns, with a eastie built |y William the Conqueror and some beautiful medieval churches, was in garnet...
...We followed as humble camp followers on a train reserved for the Ministry of Information snd saw some of the last scenes in the fall of the Third Republic in Bordeaux...
...Memo—No...
...Yes, this year there will be no "summer doldtums...
...Amid all those crowded and hectic days Jane 17 remains a particularly poignant memory...
...There are many parts of Franc* where it would bs difficult to throw • stone without hitting s historic or artistic object...
...One hopes thst the most adequate preparations hsve beoa made for the rushing in of food supplies to the freed areas Military exigencies claim an all-out priority, but H may he hoped that there wiN not be in the future Justification for the complaiat recently attributed to a member of the French Underground that oar bombings were causiag "the maximum less to civilian life with about the minimum of strategic achievement...
...We have established a Nets header Sustaining rami to tarry on thin work...
...I where we denl with *urda, the game ran product interesting coutrasta...
...The motive of retribution that works out consciously or blindly in history has condemned the German military leadership to an anxious defensive csmpsign in the very country where an essy offensive in 1940 rolled on almost in the fashion of s joyride...
Vol. 27 • June 1944 • No. 25
