Word: frenchmen
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...octopus: the British Empire. More than any week in the war the long tentacles of empire wrapped, the complexity wriggled, and the small eyes in the compact head stared defiance. In Libya the Axis fought against Australians, the tough colonists of empire (see p. 22), and against Free Frenchmen, auxiliary believers in empire (see p. 24). In Eritrea the Axis fought against imperial experience, which used religion as a weapon (see p. 22). In Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland, the Axis faced black men as well as white (see p. 24). The Axis knew that the only way to kill this...
This anachronistic force tagged along behind a string of Free French tanks and trucks as it crept into southernmost Libya. The caravan pushed 200 miles across the desert to el-Gatrún, which the Free Frenchmen took without so much as seeing an Italian. They went 100 miles further to the more important outpost of Múrzuch, where there was both garrison and airport. When the Free French were sighted, all the Italians went into the post and shut the gates tight. The Free French men surrounded the post in mock siege, spent a day leisurely destroying hangars...
This picturesque raid was not likely to sway the fortunes of the African war, but it had excellent propaganda value. It was the first successful independent operation of Free Frenchmen against anything but other Frenchmen. Three days after General Catroux's announcement, General de Gaulle addressed a call to arms to the pro-Vichy armies under General Maxime Weygand in North Africa and Syria: "Are you going to remain inactive with arms at your side, humiliated, broken-spirited, when the fate of France and her Empire is being decided within range of your guns? . . . The game is not finished...
Cinemactors Cregar and Muni are inspired Frenchmen who finally overcome all difficulties (except the script) in their effort to barter furs. Typical Muni walk: "through dense woods, along fast-flowing streams, across the myriad lakes of Canada, pushing farther north than any white man had ever gone before." Typical Muni talk: "Le bon Dieu. . . . This place for look-not talk...
Actually two out of every five current refugees are "100% Aryan" enough to pass even Herr Hitler's breeding tests. And this proportion is going up as Nazi influence spreads through Vichy's France and Portugal. There are Finns, Poles, Norwegians, Spaniards, Dutch, as well as Frenchmen-seven million of them-who want to leave Marseille and Lisbon before the Storm troopers arrive. All, of course, would prefer to come here, but they will go wherever the door is open from Alaska to South Africa. We have already admitted many, and we will gain by taking as many more...