BALKAN BRIDGE-HEAD

Evening Star, Issue 23680, 13 September 1940, Page 8

BALKAN BRIDGE-HEAD

FREE FRANCE AND MIDDLE EAST COUNTERING UNBRIDLED SAVAGERY In Berlin ninny years ago I saw running across the front page of a daily paper in huge letters the word Waffcnstillstandsverhandlungen. . This typical German contipodal expression, which means “ negotiations for an armistice,” referred to what was then called the Balkan War, the definite article being relatively justifiable in those days, when one war in the Balkans seemed to be an end in itself (writes Professor A. B. Chisholm, of Melbourne University, in the ‘ Argus ’). Although the thought occurred to one at the time that this groat procession of Gothic letters across the page was like a long approach to the bridge between war and peace, it had not yet been clearly brought home to us that the Balkans are themselves the wide track narrowing down to our own huge Bridge of Umpire, the Middle East. BALKAN FREEBOOTERS. There appeared somewhere about the same time, or perhaps a little later, a book by Jan Gordon that made excellent reading, ' A Balkan Freebooter.’ The central figure, was a splendid rogue, steeped m sins that still left him not wholly unlovable, and his supreme contempt for danger and suffering made of him something of a hero, however unrcspectable. We have travelled far since then, for in the Balkans at present the freebooters are at large on such a scale that they cease to have any of that attractive power that sometimes marks even a sinister individual. Theirs is freebooting according to totalitarian rules, in which not individual fortunes but the wealth of whole provinces is the stake, and in which the highwaymen do not give the victims any sporting chance, but bludgeon them into immediate surrender. And yet as this looting and distribution of'spoils becomes more shameless, one is forced to wonder whether it is not a retreating move in a still more gigantic game. Hitler, assuming the role of Mephistophelos, has forced Western man to play a murderous game not merely for his soul but for his very existence ; and there are signs that after the brilliant opening moves in which he ruthlessly sacrificed his own pawns in order to capture a continent, he has found that his most violent attacks are coolly countered. BRIDGE OF EMPIRE. It is too early to speak with certainty, but it is at least beginning to

look as if, thwarted in the air and held up by the water, Germany may fall back on to her Continental strategy. In other words. Hitler may seek in the Balkans the spectacular success which Britain is denying him. Whether this proves to he true or not, it is interesting to notice what such a change of front would entail for us.

The central point of our scattered Empire is the Middle East, which controls the approach from oast to west and from west to east like a great Bridge of Empire; and consequently any attack on it by the Axis Powers coming by way of the Balkans would concern us vitally. And here it is that wo have suffered most from the collapse of Franco, whose control post at the entrance to the bridge was lost by the defection of WcygaucT—Wcygand. of all men, whose name was a legend in Syria and whose personal prestige was one of the foremost columns of the bridge in war time. Fortunately, however. Hitler’s temperament and Ids hesitations have given us time to reorganise onr weak- i ened defences. He hesitated a long time before making his massed attacks on Britain, and. having launched them, his flainbnoyant temperament made him loath to desist and thereby to admit even the possibility of failure. FREE FRANCE. Nor is that all ; for now comes the heartening news that our lateral approaches to the .Middle East probably will be strengthened by the revolt of several French African colonies against the Vichy junta. On the map it may seem a long way from French Equatorial and West Africa to the Suez Ganal and its environs; hut, whatever the actual French forces in these colonies may be (and wc must not overestimate them), such a move would make the Italian position in Africa much more precarious. Tho Fascist jackals have hitherto shown little stomach for a frontal attack and even if the revolt of the French colonies gave ns only some new bases, our attack from the south and west would gain fresh impetus. Moreover, tho real France had a fine sense of colonisation, and French West Africa in particular is much more than a burning spot on the map. It is a region of ancient human activities, and caravans were moving across the blazing sands to Timbncton at the same time and with the same high sense of adventure as tho Spanish caravels were sailing to the golden West. Along its western shores Han no tho Carthaginian guided his ships on a voyage of discovery so old that it has grown almost mythical. And the French, who have always had abundant historical imagination, have built np a history of their won here as in other parts of Africa, so that, like Morocco and Algeria, French West Africa and the Chad districts have long since ceased to be mere distant colonies. They are part of Greater France, and may prove to be a contagion of liberty for the remaining parts. They have supplied living matter for some of the best imaginations in France, and have inspired some of the most brilliant pages of such writers as Andre Demaison, who loved the very beasts of those hot regions, as if his country had imparted to them some of its characteristic humanism. TOUAREGS AND SENEGALESE. Further, the natives of these colonies arc no mean fighters. When we read that the Senegalese chief, Amadou Diop, has sent a telegram to General de Gaulle declaring that he and his people do not want to be slaves, but wish to remain French,” wo may po disposed to look on it as a mere gesture. But Diop is an ancient name in those parts, and Diop’s people have a magnificent reputation as warriors. And what is more, the adhesion to the cause of liberty of the Senegalese and the Tonaregs, and the numerous other tribes who have clung tenaciously to that tropical soil for countless centuries, is a touching prOof of the solidarity of man when he is attacked once more by the primeval savagery out of which lie struggled upwards towards human enlightenment. The gesture is still more dramatic when you remember that this time the voice of man comes from the African sands and forests, while the savages come from the north. THE VOICE OF HISTORY. When these French colonics declared their loyalty to General de Gaulle, therefore, it was the voice of history answering his call and ours. And thus the Middle East, which is the cradle of Western history, has drawn to its defence other historical forces even - before it is attacked.

Hitler’s greatest and most relentless enemy is tho long story of man. For a while he was able to play his own game, leaving aside all the deeper implications of that story. But the history of man is humanity itself, and history is on the march once more, after having been crippled temporarily in the West. Before its onslaught the powers of anarchy have nothing to strengthen them except their own brutality, and the painful upward struggle of mankind lias been, despite its bloodiness, a slow but constant countering of that unbridled savagery. History guards the Bridge of Empire, and history is beginning to strengthen even its remotest approaches.