AFRICAN STRATEGY

Evening Star, Issue 23680, 13 September 1940, Page 7

AFRICAN STRATEGY

RALLYING DF FRENCH COLONIES DAKAR STILL A PROBLEM Apart from its value as propaganda, the decision of the French colony of Equatorial Africa, together with the associated mandate of the South Cameroons, to join General de Gaulle, is militarily important. This is especially true in a preventive way (writes the military correspondent of the ‘ Sydney Morning Herand’). Equatorial Africa comprises just under a million square miles, mostly, of dense tropical forest or desert. Communications were its main difficulty until the construction of aerodromes in the last 10 years. These landing places, carved out of the forest or concreted into the sands, are in Allied hands in maintaining the air link between Nigeria and the Sudan; but, if held by an enemy,. they might have transformed the defence of Italian East Africa. At present, Italian planes from Libya cannot fly with heavy loads of troops, munitions, or petrol to Abyssinia; but intermediate bases in the Chad or Übangui would enable supplies to be brought to the beleagured Italians in Abyssinia and Eritrea by air, for it is only 500 miles from French Übangui to the Kaffa provinces of Abyssinia.

The white population of Equatorial Africa and the Cameroons is 7,200, mostly men, and in time of emergency, these would be supported by the native levies. In the last war some of France’s best negro troops came from the coastal regions, of Gabun, and the ease of defending such country as Equatorial Africa was shown by the Germans, who held out in the Cameroons until 1916, althbugh entirely surrounded by British and French territory. There is the further point involved in General Smuts’s insistence on the point that the problem of African defence is a unitary one. He said that Kenya and the Nile now constituted the military border of South Africa; and this is obvious when we think what would happen if Italian bombers were able to come down stage by stage through French Equatorial Africa and then the Belgian Congo. It is the possibility of - aerial outflanking that is the main danger in Africa to-day.

Lastly, the rallying of Equatorial Africa has removed the possibility Of another section of the African coast being used as enemy naval bases. Unfortunately, French West Africa has not so far followed the example of French Equatorial Africa, and so the problem of Dakar, with its . modern port and the warships immobilised in its harbour, still remains.