PROMPT ACTION
NEEDED IN ATLANTIC FORESTALLING AXIS IN SPANISH & PORTUGUESE ISLANDS. AMERICAN WRITER’S VIEW. This is a frank plea for prompt action by Great Britain or the United States, or both of them, to prevent a repetition in the Atlantic Ocean of what has been happening in the Far East, writes Rex Miller in the “Christian Science Monitor.” For the way lies open to the Axis Powers, if they are not immediately forestalled, to stage off the west coast of Africa a parallel to the tragic drama in the Pacific. Japan is having to fight for the Paci-, fie islands, but it is highly probable that Hitler would not have to fire a gun to take possession of the Portuguese and Spanish island possessions in the Atlantic. By increasing his heavy pressure on Spain and Portugal he can probably force them to hand over, without serious resistance, the most important strategic pawns that still remain at large on the world’s imperial chessboard. There is. only one way to prevent this. It is for Great Britain or the United States, or both together, to act first. Have we not yet learned the danger of waiting? If Hitler is permitted to carry out this coup, he will have control from air and submarine bases in ideal situations, of the “straits of the Atlantic” between Africa and Brazil. He will stand athwart the principal American and British seaways leading to the Near East and the Far East, and Axis prestige in Latin-American countries will be greatly enhanced among those who have refused wholehearted allegiance to the cause of the United Nations. FIFTH COLUMN AT WORK. The “fifth column” phase of this daring move is already nearing completion. Both Spain- and Portugal; and their colonial possessions, are honeycombed with Nazi agents. Much of northwestern Africa also is now in the grip of Nazi agents. General Weygand, last serious opponent of this infamous German design, has been removed. North-west Africa is the Nazi jumpingoff place for the first assault on South America. The indispensable steppingstones to this trans-Atlantic objective are the Portuguese and Spanish islands: Portugal’s Azores, Madeira and Cape Verde Islands, and Spain’s Canary group. These last lie closest to Dakar.
The mainland bases lying nearest these island: Rabat, Casablanca and Agadir, bristle with coast batteries. The “fifth column” campaign has already reached the point where Nazi agents and soldiers are reported no longer to be wearing civilian clothes, but actually strutting in. uniforms. That means action is near at hand. Just as Japan by its seizure of bases on the coast of China, and especially by its occupation of Indo-China, made possible its recent offensive against the islands of the Indies, even so the Nazis are poised on the coast of Africa for a seaward push. They will, in all probability, not have to fight to win their island objectives, but before their seizure of them is many hours old, they will have transferred enough air strength from the mainland to hold the islands against naval attack,•and to begin an offensive against shipping that may make their present submarine campaign appear slight indeed. The consequences of such a move for the United Nations would be most serious. They would be faced in the Atlantic with the same sort of long-range, costly war they are now having to fight in the Pacific. Their naval advantage would be seriously impaired by enemy island air bases in the most strategic locations. DANGERS TO BE AVERTED. We apparently still cling to the hope that Portugal will remain neutral. But what assurance have we, in the light of past events, that Portugal will not pass, at any moment, into the Axis camp, and with it the islands of the Atlantic, the enormous colonial territories of Angola and Mozambique—which together, if properly used by the Nazis, might isolate South Africa from'' the rest of the continent as Indo-China passed after the fall of France to Japanese masters? Judging from Axis practices in the past, this is more likely, to happen than not. Yet we still continue to act as if it could not happen, and cling to a belief in the power of words rather than of acts. President Roosevelt once gave the Portuguese Government assurances that the- United; States had no intention of occupying any of its territories. That was long before Pearl Harbour. The promise was given on the assumption that the islands would remain in really neutral' hands. The situation has entirely changed with the declaration of war by the Axis Powers against the United States. As long as there is even a suspicion or a possibility of the Portuguese and Spanish territories becoming an instrument for the Nazi programme of world conquest, we are justified in occupying these islands in the Atlantic, as an advance line of defence.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1942, Page 4
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803PROMPT ACTION Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1942, Page 4
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