Evening star., 1941-06-17

IHe GutHOT OF Jne JOLLOUIug
dispatch, last in a series OF three,
liped under Ndzi rule in occu-
pied France for almost q year,
1Dorking and touring the region
as a nurse for the Auriliuire So
cidl, French relief organization.
BY GITTA SERENY.
NEW YORK, June 1.-THE Brit
ish have never bombed Paris, but
regularly they light in its sky a
fire of hope.
I saw it once at noon over the
Champs Elysee in Paris. This was
in March. The German military
band that makes circuit of Paris
twice each day was on its way down
the boulevard from the Arc de Trl-
omphe. Traffic on the broad side
walks had halted and people. all
the people, everybody French in all
the streets, were looking up in the
sky to watch a British airplane
write in smoke-"courage. CThe
word is spelled the same in French
as in English)
The people were silent. The band
beat and blew and passed on stolld-
ly along its gutter. The people
remained and the plane remained,
so high it could hardly be seen.
Finally, the plane went away ana
only the people remained, many
of them weeping.
Work Strike Called Mass Courage.
Courage. Do the French people
have courage in the battle they are
fighting leaderless and armylesS
against the NaZis? I don't know
that there is such a thing as a
national courage or a mass courage:
But certainly, the several hundred
thousand French Army officers now
in prison in Germany are giving
an example of something that coulo
be called mass courage IN thelr
work strike.
The Germans, who have so many
Under arms. are frantic for workers.
They advertise heavily in France,
offering a wage of 200 marks
month to any man, but stipulatlng
that 100 marks of this will be paid
to the employees family in occupied
France. The trick about this is that
occupation marks do not cost the
Nazis any more than the paper
they're printed on. The German
Army came rolling into France with
presses to print money sticking out
blatantly among its other materiel
of destruction.
This means that the Frenchman
who takes a job in Germany IS
costing the Nazis 100 marks (s40 is
the exchange rate, but the rate Is
rather meaningless) in good money
and 100 marks in funny money.
However. the Frenchman need not
care, since funny money is all the
money there is now in France.
Francs were a rarity when I left
in May.
Hunger's Effect Felt.
The Frenchman in Germany can
count on supportable treatment-the
same treatment. food and living con-
ditions as the German worker.
Every day three or four busloads
of hungry Frenchmen who have ac-
cepted jobs can be seen leaving for
Germany, their women standing de-
family to wave them good-by.
But it seems the Germans cannot
get enough workers from all the
millions of men they have con-
quered, so they have gone among
| their prison camps and have, offered
enemy soldiers the opportunity to
work at their own trades at the
prevailing rate of pay among Nazis.
This l learned from the last batch
OF 300 French officers to be released
from Germany. I happened to know
about 80 of these men. They told
me that the offer was made in
good faith and adhered to by the
Nazls. There was no punishment
for refusing to work, except that
those who refused were fed inde-
scribable food in quantities that
could not maintain health.
Each French officer, by refusing
to work, has condemned himself to
a malnutrition that is likely to
cripple him for many years. This
is courage. To submit ones self
deliberately to rotting and to stick
| to it for almost year now-that is
courage. The Germans release the
prisoners when they become too ill
to remain, and the 80 boys I knew
all returned exhausted husks, emp
| tied of health.
Departure Is Thrilling Trip.
When finally determined to get
xout of German France, the Nazis
would not let me go because my
flance is an English officer, now in
Egypt. However, there are organ
izations that run underground rail-
roads to Vichy and I employed the
services of one. paying 1000 francs
(about STAT at the official rate).
We crossed the demarcation line
on a moonlit night in May. Our
party consisted of guide, peasant
| carrying the regular weekly contra
band mail bag, myself and another
girl whom I had never met before
and whose name I do not know yet.
We passed in "a dark valley be-
tween two hills from which German
searchlights glittered. We got
through the valley and entered a