| 54. "Why don't the French work their fields? You see farm after farm without anyone working. The French are lazy." There were, until very recently, 2.230,000 Frenchmen in Germany as PWs, slave labor, deportees. After World War I, the young people of France streamed from the farms to the cities. In 1930, whole villages in some areas of France were deserted. Farm legislation made an effort to check the flow of population from the country to the cities, but it was not very effective. It is, however, wrong to deduce from this that the French are "lazy". The French farmer has always been regarded as one of the most industrious and thrifty in the world. Perhaps another reason that more Frenchmen are not in the fields is that French people have been killed by mines laid by the Germans. In one month this year 150 were killed or maimed in this manner. |
