MORE BRITISH UNITS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 120, 23 May 1942, Page 7

MORE BRITISH UNITS

Report Of Reinforcements At

Madagascar

VICHY SPECULATIONS

RUGBY, May 22

The Paris radio reports that further strong British contingents have landed at Diego Suarez, including important Royal Air Force units. It is believed that the British intend to attack the French air base further to the south.

The Free French authorities have published extracts from a report by a senior French officer who escaped from Madagascar. Vichy, he said, pursued a policy of repression and violent anti-British propaganda, which, however, failed to stifle the French sympathies of the majority of French colonists. Most of the French military personnel on the island supported General de Gaulle and the Allies. High administrative officials guilty of revealing their proAllied feelings had been imprisoned and a large number of natives had been imprisoned for the same reason to stamp out resistance.

A Vichy policy was to send back to France the more important civil servants and army officers. General Abadie, Commander-in-Chief until the middle of last year, who defended his officers accused of de Gaullist sentiments, was thus recalled to Vichy. Immediately after the armistice the whole island was determined to continue to fight. However, the indecision of the Governors of other French colonies, coupled with the subsequent activities of special Vichy envoys, prevented any effective action.

Faith in the Allied cause was keot alive by French broadcasts from London and Brazzaville, and attempts to escape to join the Free French forces were frequent, but the penalties for the unlucky ones were severe.

A cable message from Nairobi reports that Field-Marshal Smuts, interviewed at Nairobi, said that the Madagascar action had removed all likelihood of a Japanese frontal attack on South Africa.