THE WEST COAST OF AFRICA.

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 246, 19 October 1942, Page 4

THE WEST COAST OF AFRICA.

A succession of recent news items points to the probability of the tide of war turning strongly towards the west coast of Africa. Significant of the storm-signals flying on the African horizon is the landing of American troops in Liberia, a negro republic which has been nominally under the tutelage of the United States. The Germans have been busy here for years, and found fuel for their subversive propaganda in the monopoly of the Firestone Company. The importance to the Germans of this independent republic is the capital and port of Monrovia, which could be used as a submarine base, and which could supply an air base from which the Nazis could strike at Britain's two principal ports of Bathurst and Freetown and west at the airline that crosses the African continent from Sekondi to Khartum. Nigeria is closely related with several other danger points on the long seaboard of the Central and South Atlantic. The Allies — and the Nazis also — are increasingly concerned with the uncertain status of the French West African colonies, and particularly it is felt that there must soon be a drastic show-down about the position at Dakar. It was reported recently that French women and children are being evacuated from Dakar, and a message from a Reuter's correspondent at a United Nations base in West Africa alleged that German submarines, which have lately had substantial successes in the neighbourhood of Cape Palmas, are "receiving supplies and assisttance from pro- German countries which are technically peutral." The United States Government has increasing reason to believe that Dakar is one of the main channels by which Axis influence continues to make itself effective in South America.

Strong currents are flowing in Vichy France, bearing the Petain-Laval regime towards a new internal crisis, and Hitler's hand may be traced in both the domestic and colonial spheres. Besides insisting on more "co-operafcion" from Vichy in the solution of his labour problem, h.e wants a strengthening of his position at Dakar, whose importance as a strategic keypoint has been increased by BraziFs entry into the war. France is at the cross-roads. The leaders of the remnants of Parliamentary France have indignantly resented what they describe as the Marshal's attempt to assume an unlimited dictatorship. " Without the authorisation of Parliament," they said, Petain is trying to draw France "into a war against our Allies," and they warned him that the country will not follow him along that path. At what new and sinister form of collaboration with Germany does the Herriot-Jeanneney protest hint? What is brewing in the African colonies over which Vichy 's authority extends? Vichy has indignantly denied that Germany has demanded the " neutralisation " cf French West Africa and that there are already German troops at Dakar. But its uneasiness was reflected in the hurried visit of the Governor -General ' last month for consultations with Petain and Darlan, in the conferences of the Com-j mander-in-Chief of the French forces in North Africa and the Governor - Ge ner al of Algeria with Petain, and La.val's interview on the same occasion with the Ministers for War, Navy, and Colonies. These have been portentous signs. Coupled with the rising tension in Unoccupied France, they warn the Allies to be prepared to forestall whatever inimical move Hitler may be inciting the men of Vichy to make. WeU-inf'ormed quarters at Washington have expressed the view that Hitler is bidding desperately for the use of the French fleet and bases, bscause, despite his surface successes, he is contemplating another winter on the Russian front nervously, with the spectre of a second front con- ; stantly before his eyes and with ' Allied strength promising increasingly to assert itself in the Atlantic

battle, the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere. Laval's task under German tutoring seems to be to prepare the French public for a breach of relations with the United States. The Scripps-Howard Press foreign editor, Mr William H. Simms, suggested recently that Hitler is also worried over the prospect of a Franco-Belgian- American expedition being organised in Central Africa and marching against Rommel's rear in Egypt. ' v