The London correspondent of the Chicago Daily News reported today, “on excellent authority,” that Georges Mandel, former French Interior Minister, had been ordered arrested in Morocco by the French Government, together with ex-Premier Edouard Daladier and other former ministers.
Mandel was “the soul of France,” in the days before the capitulation, fighting with “intelligence, stubbornness and patriotism for faith to an ally and war to the end for the honor of France,” according to a London dispatch written for the North American News Alliance by Ele J. Bois, former editor of Le Petit Parisien. Bois said of Mandel:
“He animated the discouraged, inspired the brave and shamed the weak. He downed every poor argument, he forestalled all maneuvers…To M. Chautemps, who wanted Prime Minister Churchill to give the Cabinet a release for a separate peace, this brave Frenchman replied: ‘It is not done. We must honor our undertaking.’…
“In these historic days this man was the soul of France. Georges Mandel showed himself to be the true spiritual son of Clemenceau–the Clemenceau of 1918….M. Mandel followed in his footsteps when he said to the defeatists at a Cabinet meeting, ‘I am surprised to hear of capitulation from Ministers newly appointed to strengthen the war Cabinet…M. Mandel might have won had not the plotters exploited his ‘non-Aryan’ origin, in spite of his obvious patriotism.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
