INSTRUCTOR DESCRIBES NAZI SABOTAGE IN PRE-WAR FRANCE

Leroy J. Benoit is an instructor in French, a man who spends much of his time in Sever, many of his hours correcting papers, but he is an instructor who can tell an unbelievable tale of sabotage, of large-scale intrigue, of fifth-column.

Attached to the American Embassy in Paris during the summers of 1936 and 1937 as interpreter, for a while liasion officer between the Embassy in Paris and in Berlin, and several months in the intelligence division of the Paris Embassy, Benoit saw at first hand a great part of what in his own words he describes as the "gigantic behind-the-scenes action which prepared the way for the final debacle, the collapse of France." The story he tells, unbelievable in 1937, seems all too familiar today.

Nazis Worked From Paris Fair

An far back as the summer in which Paris was the scene of the great international exposition, Benoit saw Nazi agents actually operating from the German pavilion which then stood on the bank of the Seine. Although their activity was known Benolt claims that the French contented themselves with making heated protests to the German Reich through customary diplomatic channels and accepted as satisfactory the avowed reprimands dispensed by the Berlin government.

Nazi exchange-instructors, assigned to the French universities in great numbers, were at that time traveling about the country armed with the familiar Leica, Benoit says. Instead of taking courses in French universities, they were studying French topography, communications, and public facilities.

As a sample of the work of these men, Benoit tells of the discovery by French authorities of a report "filled with a complete photographic history of the landing field at Tours, the munitions dumps, the number of planes, the number of pilots, maps of the principal highways, storage depots, granaries, and a hundred other things."

French Navy Photographed

Another instance cited is that of a message sent from Brest in the summer of 1937 which read like this: "The erniser Colbert is in dock No. 6 Amnament 6425, forward guns carefully phoioed, agents incited workmen's strike on Monday 16th."

France awoke too late to these perils, says Benoit. "Her people were apathetic and unconcerned, her workers jealous of their pocketbooks and not jealous enough of their fatherland," and he goes on to draw a parallel between the Vichy consuls in the United States and the German pavilion at the Paris Exposition. "Vichy is not France," maintains Benoit, "Vichy is Berlin, therefore Germany."