MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
HE Vichy wireless on Friday night announced the sudden death of Georges Mandel. Few details were given and the whole story ill only be disclosed to us when France is liberated. It appears, wever, that Mandel was killed while being transferred from the ante prison to some concentration camp elsewhere. We know that t940 Mandel, with Paul Reynaud and other prominent patriots, as interned by Vichy in a fortress in the unoccupied zone. It was bsequently reported that he had been handed over to the Germans d transferred to some sinister prison in Germany. It may well be at the Germans sent him back to Paris in order that he might be urdered upon French rather than upon German soil. The Vichy reless did not employ the accustomed formula to the effect that andel was " shot while trying to escape": they admitted that e car in which he was being transported from the Sante prison s attacked and that " a struggle ensued " in the course of which eorges Mandel lost his life. It may be that he was set upon by arnand's militia and coldly done to death. It may be, on the other nd, that some attempt at rescue was made, and that he was shot his guards. The imgaination pictures the scene that might have curred. A sudden traffic block would have happened as the prison n debouched upon the boulevards ; there would be a rattle of mmy-guns, the scurry of civilians taking shelter, the crash of lintering glass as a motor-cycle dived into a shop window, the rill of many whistles, and the blood creeping slowly among the ring stones. It is just possible (since Vichy has a habit of publish- ; obituaries of ip opponents who are still alive) that Mandel was fact rescued and is now in hiding. But it is more probable that is brave man died fighting in the streets of Paris and that the ermans have been cheated of their prey.
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