Savagery in France
If anything more were needed to unite the people of France in hatred of the Nazis and to stir the indignation of civilised people in both hemispheres it has been found in the abomina- tion of cruelty by which innocent Frenchmen have been slaughtered in groups of fifty for each German assumed to have been murdered by a Frenchman. A hundred Frenchmen have already been killed recently under this damnable system of reprisal, and a hundred more are held awaiting a similar fate in the event of no one providing incriminating evidence. As last refinement of cruelty, French people, according to a Vichy report, are to be bribed with the offer of the release of relatives who are prison6rs of war in Germany if they will come forward to denounce the culprits. President Roosevelt has voiced the opinion of the United States in declaring that this execution of innocent hostages " revolts a world already inured to suffering and brutality " ; and Mr. Churchill has added that retribution for these crimes henceforward takes its place among the major purposes of the war. Such an utterance as this is not to be confused with generalities of the last war as represented in the " Hang the Kaiser " campaign. It implies a procedure more methodical and severely in accordance with the law of civilised countries, under which the evidence of specific crimes should be carefully kept by the Allied Powers and the perpetrators listed with a view to future trial—a suggestion, put forward by Lord Cecil, whose object is rather deterrent than retributive. It is not forgotten that these mass-crimes committed in France under the orders of such men as Sruelpnagel have had their even more hideous counterparts in Poland and Yugoslavia, and in the atrocities behind the lines in Russia—though the news of the latter was not so quickly and circumstantially reported to the world. But France is a country whose rulers in the unoccupied area have agreed to " co-operate " with Germany—and at this moment Petain is making plaintive appeals to the Nazis on the one hand and his countrymen on the other.
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