Claiming that his native France "was not really beaten," 20-year old Parisian refugee Jean H. Dourif '44 said in an interview yesterday that "the German occupation will do the people a lot of good because it will tend to unite them once more. All they need now is a good leader."

Dourif puts the blame for France's collapse directly on the generals and government officials, claiming that the country "was a victim of its own people, dishonored by the blindness and mule-headedness of its leaders."

French People Deceived

"No alert nation would have slept behind the Maginot line for nine months like we did," he asserted. "On that score and many others, the French people were deceived again and again."

He went on to relate that for three consecutive days during the battle of France, a large Paris newspaper said that the Nazis had thrown in their last division. Living in Paris until two days before the German occupation, he saw first-hand how censorship kept the facts from the people.

In regard to the inefficiency of the French military machine, Dourif cited the case where a force of 400 boys, including many of his friends, crossed that small 20-mile strip between the North and South armies. Why these armies never joined is still a mystery to him.

France Didn't Have Chance

Backing up his claim that France was really not beaten, he pointed out that only 80,000 men were killed out of all the fighting forces. "We did not even have a chance to pit our whole strength against the invaders," he added.

"Half of the French armies were sent to Syria and the other to Belgium so that as a result, only training equipment was between the Germans and Paris during most of the war." It was in these training divisions that young Dourif's friends were slaughtered in outmoded planes and tanks.

To show the super-confidence in their defenses during the war, the people tried to forget the war Nightclubs flourished, munitions workers although paid 200 times as much as soldiers, called numerous strikes; and the remains of the secret service was absolutely dead.

Ex-convicts and ex-communists manned a large portion of the Maginot line, according to Dourif and when they saw the Germans in the distance they went out and bathed in the river, illustrating the "don't care" attitude of many people.