"LISTENING POSTS"

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 232, 1 November 1940, Page 3

"LISTENING POSTS"

GERMAN POLICY CONSULAR APPOINTMENTS Possible Ggrman threats to the .peace of the Western Hemisphere are the subject of a. continuing policy bj- the Un,itfcd States to defeat them. Appointment of Consuls, designed as "listening posts" is being continued. In addition to Iceland and Greenland, officers have been appointed to the Islands of Ste Pierre and Miquelon, owned by France, at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrcncc and also to Martinique, a French West Indies colony, where British warships have maintained close watch over a shipment of American-made planes on board the French aircraft-carrier Beam, which left Halifax, and, on the collapse of France, put into Martinique. But the most significant of these appointments is to Dakar, French West Africa, rendered necessary by German-dominated France, and the activity of German technicians, at that post. Dakar is tho West African air gateway to South America, only 1500 miles from Natal, Brazil. Fram its already commercially developed air bases, military planes fould operate fanwise, menacing the entire South American coastline, the West Indies, Panama Canal, and the Gulf of .Mexico coast of the United States. When the French Government at Vichy reorganised its colonial administration, all units in the French colonial empire in Africa were put under one head, with the exception of Dakar, which is to be administered separately. This development which may permit a greater degree of ' secrecy in handling thy, port's ail'airs, coincided with information t hat 'many German technicians 'I ami-.', '-■d at' Dakar recently.