State of Order

The New Order in France last week had all the orderliness of a jungle. The persistent feud between the German army and Adolf Hitler's Schutzstaffel (Elite Guard) had reached well across the German border into France. Having been given full police power in the Reich and occupied territories, the Schutzstaffel plastered Paris with posters proclaiming new cruelties to the Jews. Whereupon men in German army uniforms went through the streets and tore many of the posters down.

The Schutzstaffel went right ahead sending some 27,000 refugees, Jewish and otherwise, to concentration camps. But the New Order was further disheveled when many Paris gendarmes refused to cooperate in the seizures. Time out was required for the arrest and jailing of these chicken-hearted officers.

A final chaotic note was supplied by Vichy's sweating, white-tied Pierre Laval. He apparently took the Schutzstaffel seizures as a rebuke to him for failing to recruit the 350,000 French workers whom Hitler wanted in Germany. Pierre Laval had been able to recruit a mere 18,000, including many unskilled French Arabs. Laval was hurt by his German bosses' lack of consideration. By way of characteristically weak-chinned protest he called Vichy's Paris agent, Fernand de Brinon, back to the unhappy spa.

In Berlin the architects of the New Order promptly canceled the return of the first trainload of French war prisoners promised in exchange for French labor.

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