VICHY’S DISHONOUR

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21229, 27 September 1940, Page 7

VICHY’S DISHONOUR

SETBACK TO DE GAULLE THREAT BY JAPANESE (omclal Wireless) (Received Sept. 27, 11 a.m.) RUGBY, Sept. 26 Referring to the setback suffered by General de Gaulle’s first attempt to seize the initiative in Africa, the Times says: “In Africa Vichy shows fight, if only in defence of its chains. At the other side of the Eastern Hemisphere, however, where they are not stiffened by the support of their masters, the Vichy Government has allowed the firm stand at first made by their commander on the spot to fall away into collapse. “Indo-China occupies a strategic position of the first importance in the Far East, and its fate cannot be a matter of indifference to either Britain or the United States, while, of course, the interest of China is immediate. Helpless as Vichy would have been at this distance if they were unassisted, it is clear that in making a firm resistance to the Japanese encroachments they would not have stood alone. “The precise extent of the concessions they have made has not been made public, but it is certain that a new and grave threat to the Burma Road has been opened, and no one who knows the methods of Tokio supposes that the whittling away of the French Empire in Asia will cease at the point laid down in the agreement. Shame On French Government “The policy of surrender is bringing no less shame on the Vichy Government in its application to the Mediterranean lands. People in Syria are showing that they resent the dishonour of France more than do the men who occupy the seats of authority. Rather than submit to the Italians, who since the rape of Albania have ranked as the arch enemies of Islam, Bedouin soldiers are slipping away on their camels from the camps near Damascus in search of liberty, and many try to achieve it in union with their old rival, the Arabs of Iraq. “No less significant is the movement among the Senegalese sharpshooters of what was General Weygand’s army for General de Gaulle.”