FRENCH WORKERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25021, 15 September 1942, Page 5

FRENCH WORKERS

CONSCRIPTION ORDER LABOUR GANGS FOR GERMANY (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, Sept, 14. Under pressure, M. Laval lias introduced a new law conscripting all men between 18 and 30 and unmarried women between 21 and 35, “for work necessary in the national interest.’’ British and other foreign residents arc also affected. The Daily Telegraph's correspondent on the French frontier says the new law is the most drastic ever passed in France. It is the result of the Germans’ failure to induce French worker? to go to German factories. Any person whose work is not considered “ useful’’ can be transferred to other employment. Employers are forbidden to engage workers except through the Government labour service, and they must also undertake to form wane cangs, presumably for work in Germany. The penalties for infringement are five years’ imprisonment and a fine of £ls, which will both be doubled for a second offence.

REASONS FOR ORDER

FAILURE OF GERMAN PLAN RUGBY, Sept. 13.

The workers of France, by frustration of Hitler’s plan to entice 350,000 of their number to work in Germany, have created a shortage of labour tor the German machine, which in the weeks to come may be a major factor in the Battle of Russia. This point was made in a broadcast by M. Andre Philip, National Commissioner for Labour and tbe Interior for Fighting France. Everything was tried to get the 350,000 Frenchmen to go to Germany, said M. Philip, but most of them preferred misery and destitution rather than submit to alien rule, and Vichy had succeeded in getting only 30,000 workers, mostly labourers, women, and foreigners, for the German industry. Hitler was furious, and was attempting to use force, but M. Philip contended that compulsion would come too late, for the Russian winter would begin in a month’s lime, and now at the time of the decesive assault on the Russian front the German plan was short of 300,000 men.