THE NEEDS OF FRANCE
By IRENE WARD, M.P.
WE have become so accustomed to accurate and objective presentation of conditions in European countries when our Press correspondents are allowed access to the facts that their failure to appreciate the true significance of the Parisian scene at the time of the liberation is disconcerting. The first Press releases of news from Paris did immense harm to all the liberated countries. The British public is susceptible to first impiessions, and the re- action to high hats, smart Parisians and black markets was one of resentment. This feeling has been difficult to dispel.
My first impression when I left the Le Bourget airfield was the absence of that well-remembered chatter and vivacity, and the excitement that always seemed to be the prelude to any Continental visit. The crowds were as quiet as if every ounce of vitality had been squeezed out of them, and only the clatter of wooden-soled shoes was heard. High hats were, indeed, there, but they were home-made and worn as if to cock a snook at the retreating invader.
My intention was to see life in France not at diplomatic or political levels, but just as it is now lived by ordinary people. We can plan world organisations for the maintenance of peace, but our leaders must be influenced by and dependent on public opinion, and if French life interpreted through the common people is made real to us, and the British way and purpose are understood in France, the cause of peace must inevitably be helped, not hindered. In Paris I went to the first conference to be held at the Sorbonne since the liberation of French teachers of English. It was a stimulating experience. They were passionately interested in our new Education Bill, both in the practical details and in the new con- ception of education which lay behind its introduction. Then, guided by a Canadian girl who had lived and been educated in Paris and had parachuted back, I met many people who during the weary years of occupation had given active help to us. The full story of French resistance has yet to be told ; perhaps it never will be, but we need to realise that men and women were actively helping the Allies all over France to prepare for D-Day.
Resistance was divided into two main groups, the "Maquis," which was a trained military organisation engaged in guerilla war- fare, and the civilian resistance groups whose exploits for security reasons have had little publicity, but who worked in close liaison with us. In all my varied contacts there was always a reference to someone—a man or a woman—who had paid the price of resistance. Some had been more fortunate, for instance a teacher who had made a point of meeting at one of the big stations escaped Allied airmen on their way to Spain. He saw them across Paris and safely on their way, but finally he was caught and sentenced to death. Fortunately Liberation intervened and achieved his rescue.
At Lyons, the centre of a wide region where the original Maquis
was organised and trained, the Provincial Government is in the hands of their leaders. I met .a number of them, men of outstanding integrity and strength of character, whose inclusion in the national political life of France would be of the greatest value. From Lyons, accompanied by a young lieutenant and a sergeant of the Maquis, I drove to Grenoble and into the Vercors. The sergeant, rejoicing in the historic name of Jean Jacques, knew every mountain, every village—now in complete ruins—each blade of gia-ss, and we re- constructed every detail of the Battle of the Vercors. Here in this quiet countryside the Germans -had ravaged and pillaged, and at VassieuX, in their extermination of the village, they had committed typical crimes of the utmost brutality. In France, as in other countries, a clandestine military organisation attracts many un- desirable adherents, and there are armed bandits in the mountains and hills today awaiting an opportunity to challenge authority. Informed peopie are conscious of a seething discontent in France only held in check by the hope that their problems will soon be
cilved. Eleven months after D-Day there is still starvation in many areas, particularly in the towns. From all accounts there seems to be plenty of food in France, and one finds it in the country districts. Everyone agrees that the breakdown in supplies is primarily due to lack of transport, but the lack of proper distribution is causing great disquiet. There is a rationing-system, but cards are not rations and the rations are not there.
There are no medical supplies. I met a woman who had poured a kettle of boiling water over her arm. She went to hospital, but there was no lint and no cotton wool. There are no clothes at a price which the ordinary French citizen can pay, and hundreds of thousands of prisoners and deportee workers on their way back to France will ne.id clothing urgently. There are no needles, cottons or buttons. There is no heating or hot water, except in the hotels requisitioned for the Allies ; many people have not had baths for five years. The presence of a Black Market shocks us. The Black Market was, of course, a patriotic innovation designed to impede the Germans, and it is impossible to break it, with the general disorganisation of supplies and the lack of raw materials.
As France's Ally, we cannot repudiate all responsibility in such a crisis. We should by now have decided what help it was possible for us to give and made the decision public. If the French Govern- ment rejected our offers of assistance, we should at least have made our gesture. To take one example—of transport. We have given a few lorries here and there, but not even in time to save the beet sugar crop in Normandy, which could not be carried to the refineries and has rotted in the fields We ought by now to have been in a position to tell the French that they car look to us for the provision of essential vehicles, or that we are prepared to help to re-create the French transport industry by providing the necessary raw materials and supplying the articles that make bottle-necks, such as bearings, &c., from here. The industrial rehabilitation of France cannot wait indefinitely, for on it depends much of her future economic security. For the sake of Europe, the need for action is insistent.
With regard to medical supplies, I cannot believe that there is any shortage in this country, having regard to the vast preparations which were made for air-raid casualties, which we happily escaped. The allocation of a trifling amount of shipping would have over- come many shortages, and judging from the ability of the Allies to feed German prisoners on full service rations, some shipping could be released from carrying food-supplies without injuring the war effort.
The melancholy truth is that the machinery of Government for dealing with the problems of the liberated countries is too slow, not sufficiently flexible, unco-ordinated and nobody's responsibility. The Lord President of the Council only visited Europe when the House of Commons insisted on a Debate. The time has come for the appointment of a Minister of Cabinet rank with time to devote himself exclusively to the problems of the liberated countries. In France there is undoubtedly immense goodwill for the British, an asset not to be lightly dissipated. What are we doing to consolidate that affection and admiration? The British Council, with an admirable representative in Paris, is almost powerless because at this all-important moment the future of the organisation is under review. In addition a ban has been placed on the recruitment of staff. Within my knowledge the War Office maintains eminently suitable men in idleness at the taxpayers' expense. My complaint is that there is something wrong with a system of government which enables a War Department to impede peace organisation.
Another fact worth commenting on is that the Air Ministry has taken steps to publicise the exploits of the R.A.F.—a very proper decision, as it is _evident that the French people even now are little aware of the British war effort. Our publicity, however, is limited to sending a small staff and an R.A.F. Exhibition, for which accommodation has to be provided- free by the Fiench, if I under- stand the position correctly. At any rate, no money is made available to put our achievements across in the way they deserve.
Unless men and women who can command a hearing, and are prepared to interest themselves in the methods His Majesty's Government propose to use in the future to help international under- standing, the opportunity will vanish, and perhaps this time for
ever. The weakness in our approach to all these questions which so vitally affect the problems of liberated countries, and, ipso facto, our future relationships, is that we have no effective means of con- trolling, with an understanding perception, the multitude of influences which may make or mar British policy in the years to come.
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