Ready

Frenchmen were grimly convinced last week that Germany was in the very last stages of preparation for a war which Adolf Hitler would decide to fight now or later. On August 15, the 52 divisions of the German Army had begun a month of divisional training. Corps maneuvers in the 18 corps areas were under way this week. But it was agonizingly plain to those on the opposite side of the Rhine that Germany was not merely engaged in normal autumn military exercises.

On the Czechoslovakian border, Field Marshal Hermann Goering had reportedly massed 200,000 men; from Salzburg, military highways were being feverishly constructed, and the railway to Eisenstein on the Czech frontier was being double-tracked. General Goering bragged at Nuernberg that private industry on the Rhine was crippled, so heavily had he drafted workers to rush completion of the Siegfried line. Back from the borders, the Third Reich was an armed camp. Conscripts due for discharge this week were indefinitely retained in the army. With the calling of the new class, 1,500,000 men were in feldgrau from the North Sea to the Danube. All men under 65 were forbidden to leave Germany. All former officers and technicians of the air force were called to the colors. Doctors were required to register their vacation addresses with the police. Hundreds of private motor vehicles were rented or requisitioned and all German farm horses which had completed their harvest work were conscripted by the army. Non-military building projects as important as Munich's new subway were virtually suspended. If this was not mobilization, the French had no other name for it.

In Paris, resolute Premier Edouard Daladier, at last able to convince Britain that she had reason to feel the gravest alarm (see col. 3), rushed French preparations to fight effectively at once, if obliged.

Heavy trucks rumbled into Paris and dumped sand at points where it would be handy to shovel into bags for bomb shelters. Some 1,200,000 Frenchmen were with the colors, for in France also, recruits whose training period ended with August received no permission to return home. The whole of the vast steel and cement subterranean Maginot Line was more fully manned than ever before. General Edouard Requin, in command of the Maginot Line, was abruptly promoted to the Superior War Council and several other high army commanders were given new key posts by Premier Daladier, who is his own drastic, jut-jawed Defense Minister.

With wealthy families of Strasbourg already evacuating that border city, France, too, began to gird internally. In Paris, the Renault factory was turning out army trucks and mechanized units so fast there was no time to paint them. A canvass was made of retail gasoline supplies, and retailers were warned not to let their private sales reduce their reserves below specified amounts. Unemployed and vacationing bus drivers were registered. Sailors of the French Navy, recalled from leave, poured into Brest by every train and bus as 62 warships of the French Atlantic Fleet were fully loaded with food, fuel and ammunition. United Pressman Harold Ettlinger cabled that the possibility of war and the certainty that it would involve France were so generally accepted that "there was little tension in Brest." Similar reports came from other parts of France. Men apparently avoided the subject of war as they might avoid the appearance of being frightened.

France at war must draw vital supplies and manpower from her colonies, funneling these in chiefly through her polyglot port of Marseille. France could not consider herself in fighting trim unless the Marseille stevedores' strike was smashed. Premier Daladier proceeded to smash it.

The Marseille stevedores, basing their stand on the French 40-Hour Week Law which the Cabinet took power to modify in special cases fortnight ago, "struck" by refusing to work over the weekends, having worked 40 hours during the week. Premier Daladier last week called the stevedores to the colors, put them under army orders to do whatever unloading might be required, and then rewarded their prompt compliance. During inclement weather stevedores were permitted to wait around inside covered piers, drawing full pay from the State for what was technically considered "working." To the logical French mind this meant that even the radical waterfront riffraff of Marseille had proved to be "loyal," ready to the last stevedore to unload pour la Patrie.

The nation sat tight to see if, after 19 years and ten months, the Armistice was about to end.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.