SAKIET
SIR,—In his letter, Dr. Forestier says 'atrocities have been committed . . . exceptionally, by French soldiers.'
I would draw his attention to thq report of the French Catholic hierarchy in the 'Lettre aux com- munautes de la Mission de France' which contains the following declaration made by a young service- man : Volunteers were called for to shoot those who had been tortured (that way there were no traces, no risk of 'stories')—myself, I didn't like it. You know, it's true : to shoot a man one hundred metres away, in battle, wouldn't worry me, be- cause the man would be far away, you wouldn't see so clearly. He's armed, too, and he can shoot back or fight with his bayonet . . . but to shoot a man like that, without protection, in cold blood-1 couldn't. So I never volunteered and became the only one in our section who hadn't shot 'his' man. They called me 'the little girl' One day the captain called me up and told me, `I don't like little girls, so get ready, the next one is yours.' A few days later, eight prisoners who had been tortured were brought to be shot. I was called forward, and told, in front of all my mates, `Go on, little girl, it's yours!' I went up to the man, he looked at me. I still see his eyes looking at me . . . it disgusted me.. . . I fired . . . my mates shot the others. After- wards it became less strange, but the first time, I tell you, it really did something to me. . . . It may be a clean job; but after all, those men are all criminals when you come to think of it. If you release them, they would start all over again, killing old men, women, children. You just can't let them do that. . . . So really, you're
cleaning the country of all the dirt. . , And then, these people want Communism, don't you see?
Perhaps Dr. Forestier would read the report of the Commission de Sauvegarde, appointed to investi- gate allegations of torture, or the articles in not only !'Express and France-0 bservateur, but also the Catholic periodicals La Croix and Temoignage Chritien.
I would agree that these are cases of individual, and not national, responsibility. But now that these abuses, this stain on France's honour, have been exposed : unless the French nation use every means in their power to abolish them and to bring the culprits to justice, then the matter will 'become a crime, a responsibility, to be borne by the French people.
To compare Algeria with Cyprus is to distort the picture—the Ireland of 1920-22, with the behaviour of the infamous Black and Tans, would seem a much closer comparison, especially as Ireland had, and still has, a large community of English origin.—Yours
faithfully, N. TRAVERS
Cross Green Cottage, Cock field, Suffolk
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