Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, MAY 7, 1942. “HONOUR” AND MADAGASCAR.
MARSHAL PETAIN and Admiral Darlan are reported to have ’ sent messages to the Vichy Commander-in-Chief at Madagascar urging the French troops to resist the attack of the British forces which have landed on the island, on behalf of the United Nations, and to “defend the honour of the French flag.” Any Frenchman should be capable of measuring at its true worth this bogus appeal to patriotism and it is much to be regretted that the island garrison is resisting the British occupation. What Petain and Darlan mean by the defence of French honour has been made manifest in a vast amount of ignominious truckling to Nazi Germany and her Axis partners and has nowhere been made clearer than in the base surrender of IndoChina to Japan, and the attempt to place Syria at the disposal, of Germany.
As to Laval, who has had the effrontery to protest against what h« describes as an attempt by the United States. to “forbid France to defend herself,” everybody knows that his policy is to seek personal, aggrandisement and safety by completing t io betrayal of his country. Like the rest of the world, all Frenchmen, whether they are honest men or Vichy traitors, know well that’the declaration of the United Nations that Madagascar, ami particularly its naval base of Diego Suarez, are being occupied solely in order to prevent their use by the enemy, ami that “Madagascar of course will be restored to France after the wai or at any other time when its occupation is no longer essential to the common cause of the United. Nations” means precisely what it says and may be accepted without question.
On the other hand Laval with his talk about the right of France to defend herself, and Petain and Darlan who speak of the defence of French honour are all of them obedient servants of the Axis gangsters whose deliberate and. plainly disclosed aim is permanently to enslave and despoil. France. There does not seem to be any doubt that the British action at Madagascar has been taken just in time to prevent this key stronghold of the Indian Ocean being handed over to Japan as IndoChina was, and as Syria would have been handed to Germany if the men of Vichy had been given their way. As the actual head of the contemptible Vichy administration, Laval, no doubt will seek to retort upon, the latest action of Britain and the United Nations by going to the ultimate limits of “collaboration” with Nazi Germany. It has been said that in a policy of attempting to make France the active ally of Germany Laval would have' the support of many of the senior officers of the French Navy and of some “big business and other groups.
There have been indications also, however, that those who are most eager to carry the betrayal of France to its limits are alive to the dangers involved and know that there is a point beyond which the French nation, even in*its present bondage, will refuse to be dragooned or coerced. The recent British bombing of war factories in France working for Germany has produced some suggestive evidence in this connection. The other day a lying broadcast from Berlin purported to report reprisal raids on Britain by French aircraft, but no such raids were made and it has yet to appear that Laval and his accomplices have even dared to contemplate action of the kind. Where the ultimate reactions of Vichy and of the real France are concerned, as well as in the effect on the course of the war in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere, the sequel to the British occupation of Madagascar will be awaited with keen interest.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 May 1942, Page 2
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628Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, MAY 7, 1942. “HONOUR” AND MADAGASCAR. Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 May 1942, Page 2
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