U.S. TROOPS IN LIBERIA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 20 October 1942, Page 5

U.S. TROOPS IN LIBERIA

NO OFFICIAL EXPLANATION AIR THREAT TO DAKAR STRATEGIC IMPORTA N C 1; STRESSED New York. Oct. 19. There has been no official explanation of the landing of American troops in Liberia, observes the New York “Times,” though it coincides with reports that German submarines arc operating against Allied convoy routes from Cape Palmas just across the border of eastern Liberia. Vichy will not fail to note that Monrovia is only 750 air miles from Dakar. Berlin says Liberia will soon join the United Nations. In that event French West Africa will be entirely blocked off in the south-east by territory hostile to Germany. It is not surprising that German propaganda is nervous about Dakar and the hinterland or that Hitler is exerting the utmost pressure to obtain military control of the area. Liberia is the closest we have come to Dakar, although the British at Freetown are even closer, but the landing is apparently only the latest of a series of bridgeheads we have flung around the Gulf of Guinea. The Axis reported that American troops are in the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa. ( and Leopoldville. The military resources of this vast section are now very considerable even without the influx of Americans. The map reveals how completely the Axis flank and rear in North Africa and Vichy’s stronghold of Dakar lie open to an advance from the south. —P.A. LIBERIA’S HISTORY Liberia is a Negro republic in West Africa established by the United States in 1822 as a home for freed American slaves. The inhabitants to-day are nearly all Negroes who are for the most part Christians. The population of these 43.000 square miles is about two and a hall' millions. The capital is Monrovia. c In the last war Liberia was the last stronghold of the Germans in Africa. ~ Dakar is about 700 miles to the northward* a