Report France Planning to Let Refugees Work; Press Hails Curb on Incitement

Newspapers of all shades of political opinion, with the exception of the anti-Semitic Action Francaise, today praised the Government decrees outlawing racial propaganda in the press. At the same time they reported that the Government was planning action that would make it possible for many refugees not only to remain in France but to obtain labor and commercial permits which had hitherto been withheld.

The reports said the Government, realizing that other countries had been utilizing the initiative of aliens in building up their industries, had decided to issue residential permits and labor licenses to aliens who could prove they were qualified laborers, engineers and specialists useful to French industrial development in peacetime or defensive work in time of war. Similarly commercial permits would be granted to aliens who could prove that their projected industrial enterprises were useful under the same conditions. A special Government commission would be created to examine applicants to ascertain whether they worked in the same fields in their native countries.

The reports, indicating a new attitude by the French Government toward the refugees, were received with joy by many who could long have been useful to the country were it not for the alien residential and labor restrictions.

While all newspapers, including Col. Francois de la Rocque’s Fascist Petit Journal editorially welcomed the anti-propaganda decrees, the Action Francaise was the lone critical voice. The anti-Jewish Royalist paper demanded that the Palestine Foundation Fund, Zionist colonization agency, and the World Jewish Congress be shut down under the decrees as foreign propaganda institutions.

Other newspapers, commenting on the new edicts, stressed that henceforth individual Jews or Jewish organizations need no longer deal with anti-Semitic defamation since the State Attorney was now authorized to prosecute on his own initiative. Le Figare approved the decrees “without reservation,” declaring they were in the interests of national defense. Le Petit Journal commented that “religious and racial propaganda, inspired directly and indirectly from abroad, has long provoked disgust in France.” L’Ordre hailed the action as “excellent and noble.” L’Epoque declared: “Bravo! The Government did well by prohibiting racial propaganda.” L’Oeuvre voiced the hope that the decrees would eliminate the further appearance of anti-Semitic boulevard publications “which have shamed France.”

Berlin dispatches said the German press violently attacked the decrees.