The Importance of Dakar

Southland Times, Issue 24240, 25 September 1940, Page 4

The Importance of Dakar

THE NATURE and purpose of the naval action which has been proceeding at Dakar, on the coast of French West Africa, are still far from clear. About a week ago it was announced that four French cruisers and three destroyers had passed through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic, and the suggestion was made that they were rallying to the Free French forces of General de Gaulle. The Vichy Government, however, declared that they had gone to the French naval base at Dakar to convoy food ships back to France—an explanation which was obviously false since a convoy would have no chance of escaping the British blockade in this region. The conjecture was then made that the British patrols at Gibraltar had allowed the French squadron to pass because it would be less dangerous outside the Mediterranean than in French or Italian ports. The transfer of the French warships from Toulon to Dakar must have had a deeper significance, however, for the British Admiralty found it necessary to .engage them in the West African port where they were lying alongside the disabled battleship Richelieu. The size of the British naval and military force is uncertain, but it included men of the Free

French Army headed by General de Gaulle himself.

While details of the action must be awaited, it is not improbable that«it is connected with recent German activities at Dakar, which owes its strategic importance to the fact that it is at the centre of the great African coastal bend on the Atlantic. Parties of Germans flew there ostensibly to take over a Polish steamer and to supervise the immobilization of French naval units. There are well-established French . air routes across the Sahara from North Africa, and it would not be difficult for the Germans to transport considerable numbers of troops to West Africa. Their objective might be a temporary diversion or a strategic blow against Britain’s small colonies in West Africa. Dakar would-be admirably situated as a base for raids against Britain’s Atlantic shipping routes. If Dakar and Freetown, the port of Sierra Leone, were both to fall into German hands, they would constitute a deep-seated threat to one of the life-lines of the Empire. The ' decisive measures which the British Fleet is taking against this eventuality will be welcomed in the United States no less than in Britain and South Africa. American strategists have long been disturbed by the fact that only 1900 miles of sea separate South America from West Africa, and they have seen in the long-range flights made during the present war a warning of what might happen if an enemy held Dakar- and could count on a friendly* fascist Brazil.