MR. FRY AND MISS MOATS IN VICHY FRANCE
Clair, Louis
Mr. Fry And Miss Moats In Vichy France Their Missions Were Separate And Poles Apart SURRENDER ON DEMAND, by Varian Fry. Random House. $3. NO PASSPORT FOR PARIS, by Alice-Leone Moats. G. P....
...But definitely . . . the oysters at Maxim's are nearly as good as in peacetime...
...Fry, many of those outstanding refugees who already have left a permanent mark on America's intellectual life, would have perished in the hands of the Gestapo...
...Without Mr...
...On the contrary, in most cases they did their best to sabotage Fry's work...
...Many of his stories seem to come right from a Hollywood thriller, and yet—as this reviewer, who happens to have been one of Mr...
...Miss Moats crossed into France with the help of : donkey and of couriers of the French underground She travelled for a few weeks in France under an as sumed name, visited Paris, had dinner with a very important collaborationist and a few Nazis, and bought 3 pairs of pure silk slippers and a nightgown at only 10,500 francs...
...In these days when human lives have become so very cheap it is heartening to read of Mr...
...Her insight into the life of the Spanish people win don't belong to the smart set came mostly through thi contacts of her chambermaid...
...Miss Moats came back with 2 bottles of genuine Guerlain perfume...
...G. P. Putnam's Sons...
...She met underground workers and some men she describes as "Resistance leaders," but who seem to have been afraid of nothing more than of the men of the Maquis: "Most of the men in the Maquis are tough characters to whom it has become natural to be outlaws...
...thus to her "the ball given by the Duke of Alba had been the most important topic of conversatioi in the Iberian peninsula...
...Reviewed by Louis Clair BOTH these books describe the authors' experiences in Vichy France—but here the resemblance ends...
...To one who came there straight from his New York desk, it must have been somewhat strange suddenly to drop into the turmoil of the Marseilles of 1940, the city that had become the headquarters of all the hunted of Europe...
...It required no small courage and ingenuity for a lone American, aided by a few collaborators, to organize the "underground railroad" under such circumstances, since American officials of both the Vichy Embassy and the Marseilles Consulate didn't prove of much help...
...Fry has written an enthralling record of his 13-months' stay in France, from the Spring of 1940 until the end of August, 1941...
...Fry's "clients," can testify—they are all rigorously true...
...We can learn much from her on black-market-dinner prices in Spain and France, on comparative qualities of luncheons in Paris and Madrid Ritz Hotels...
...MISS MOATS knows all about food and drinks and parties but preciously little of Spain or France...
...Miss Moats constantly moved in the smart circles of Madrid, among the high Spanish aristocracy and bureaucracy...
...Fry must have come home with the justified feeling of a job well done...
...It's the record of a truly humane mission...
...Queipo de Llano, most brutal and bloodthirsty general of the civil war, "is extremely popular with the Anda-lusians...
...Miss Moats visited a concentration camp, of coursi with an official party—but the champagne that wa, served after the inspection was Spanish champagne and you know how exceedingly bad Spanish champagm is...
...ONE cannot help but feel that it would have been more useful if the underground couriers who helped Miss Moats to cross the Pyrenees instead had helped to bring to safety some more of Mr...
...Fry bribed officials, worked with gangsters, bought false passports, duped the Vichy police—all under the coyer of a respectable relief organization...
...She thinks that Franco's regime isn't quite so bad ; they still serve excellent dinners and her friend, Miguel de Rivera, son of the late dictator, himself one of the founders of the fascist Falange and minister in Franco's cabinet "can never be anything but a liberal...
...Fry's courageous mission, of his experiences in securing for his refugee "clients" papers, visas, and escape...
...She is generous with details about parties at Madrid and the quality of the food at Maxim's...
...The book is an account of his adventures as the organizer of an "underground railroad" that succeeded in smuggling out of France many anti-Nazi and antifascist refugees, thus saving them from the Gestapo...
...Miss Moats tells about her life in Franco Spain in 1943 and about her trip to France via underground channels in early 1944...
...But this book is much more than a well-written adventure story—though it is that too...
...Fry's proteges...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 30
