VICHY THREATS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 May 1942, Page 3

VICHY THREATS

MEANING CONSIDERED IN U.S.A. FRENCH FLEET MAY BE GIVEN TO GERMANY. TIME FOR TEMPORISING PAST. NEW YORK, May 6. The .“New. York Times,” in a leading article, ' says: “There is an unmistakeable threat in Vichy’s reply to the declaration of our Government’s full support in the British attempt to occupy Madagascar. The Note sent by Laval asserts that Vichy ‘cannot but leave to President Roosevelt the part of the responsibility which will fall on him in the consequences which will result from this aggression.’ Of what consequences is Laval thinking? “In his own way he is saying that if he believes he can use this incident to confuse and inflame French sentiment he will attempt some adventure such as the surrender of the French Fleet to Germany or French participation in a German-led expedition to recover Syria. We were faced with this risk from the start in the case of Madagascar, but it was a risk we have had to take.”

“With the example of what the French, surrender of Indo-China had already cost us, we could not possibly permit Madagascar to fall to Japan; we could not let it be used either as a base for a double-edged attack on India or as a threat to our supply lines to the strategic battlefields of the Near East, where Hitler may be fighting before the summer ends. We could only act before it was too late, trusting that the confidence of the French people in our motives and purposes can never be shaken by a man whom they know as well as they know Laval.

“For too long it has been the enemy that foresaw and attacked us; now it is our turn.”