DE GAULLE WAS RIGHT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 62, 30 August 1940, Page 4

DE GAULLE WAS RIGHT

The following reference to General de Gaulle, leader of all free Frenchmen, was made in a talk over the air by George Bagley: c¢ SUPPOSE there isn’t a British | person anywhere in the world who doesn’t by now know the name of Generat de Gaulle, who bears a simple title, but one full of meaning in these present days -the leader of free Frenchmen. Yet to very many people he was a complete nonentity when after the signing of the armistice of Compiegne he issued his famous appeal calling on Frenchmen in all parts of the world to rally around him to prolong the struggle against Germany and Italy. Fewer people, still, could have known anything about him in the early days of June when the French Premier, M. Reynaud, gave him a political post at the War Ministry. It is even doubtful whether many Frenchmen outside of military circles had at that date ever heard of him. Yet years ago this quiet, unassuming little general foresaw the Belgian disaster and the possibility of Germany using overwhelming masses of tanks to make a surprise break-through by way of the Ardennes and the Meuse. "General de Gaulle began his career in the Great French military school of -Saint-Cyr from which he emerged in 1911 with a commission as sub-lieutenant in a French infantry brigade. He was wounded near Dinant in August 1914, but recovered in time to take part in the desperate fighting around Verdun, and in March 1916 he was taken prisoner near Douaumont. So his war service was not spectacular in the amassing of honours and decorations-merely the simple tale of sacrifice and devotion which could apply to any ordinary soldier. After the war de Gaulle was appointed first to the French Headquarters staff on the Rhine, and later to the staff of Marshal Petain. Later he was on the staff of the French Army in the Middle East at Beirut. For years he had been an ardent advocate of rapid mechanisation for the French Army, and on his return to France from Syria he was given command of a tank regiment. It is an odd thing that he proved to be a prophet almost to the detail in his forecast of what could happen to France if she was attacked by a fully mechanised enemy. The following extracts from a book which he wrote seven years ago, and which unfortunately was treated rather contemptuously by the French General Staff, could serve to-day as an exact description of what actually took place in Northern France in June 1940. "He says: "To-morrow entire armies will be transported on caterpillars, Each element of the troops and of the auxiliary services will be carried up hill and down dale by appropriate vehicles. Not a man, not a gun, not a shell, not a loaf of bread but will be transported to its destination by this means. A large fighting unit, striking camp at dawn, will be 100 miles away by nightfall.’ After describing a strongly armoured brigade as rolling across country as fast as a horse can gallop, armed with 150 medium guns, 400 smaller guns, and 600 maehine-guns (incidentally a pretty

accurate description of the German tank arrowheads), he goes on to say: ‘Audacity will multiply the great cavalry operations of former days. This mechanised system of fire, shock, speed, and camouflage will show itself, in the first irruption by throwing into battle at least 2000 tanks.’ But General de Gaulle actually went further and pointed out that although the Maginot Line presented a formidable wall, it could be. turned at Belfort. near the Swiss frontier and, (I quote his own words), ‘the heights of the Moselle and the Meuse, leaning at one end on the Lorraine plateau, and at the other on the Ardennes, offer considerable obstacles, but they have no depth, and a single error would suffice for their loss, rendering vulnerable from the rear any attempt at a withdrawal through Flanders.’ Indeed General de Gaulle knew what he was talking about."

British Somaliland British Somaliland, which the Italian forces from Abyssinia have now entered, extends along the Gulf of Aden for 400 miles between French Somaliland and Italian Somaliland, and has been administered by Britain since 1884, The country consists of an undulating plateau, mostly parched and barren. There are two rainy seasons each year, each lasting for two or three months. Rivers and streams which for most of the year are dry watercourses then become raging torrents. The rivers and streams of the high country never reach the sea, as their water disappears into the sandy regions, Game and wild animals abound

in some parts of the territory. These include elephant, hippopotamus, lion, leopard, antelope, waterbuck, monkey, ostrich, marabou stork and crocodiles. The vegetation of Somaliland is sparse. All trade consists of the natura] products of the territory-myrrh, ostrich feathers, frankincense, hides, coffee, resins, skins and salt-and is exchanged for goods required by the natives at trading ports along the coast. Under the Treaty of London, 1924, Great Britain ceded 33,000 square miles of her territory to Italy. Earlier, in 1894, Britain had ceded the first of Somaliland to the Italians and in 1897 a further area to Abyssinia. In 1910 she agreed to withdraw her troops from the interior.