LIBERIA AND THE MYSTERY OF DAKAR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 177, 13 November 1942, Page 4

LIBERIA AND THE MYSTERY OF DAKAR

(Written for "The Listener’

by

A.M.

R.

O that "Second Front" is to begin this year-at least so Radio Paris says! And its chosen site is — French West Africa! As evidence in support, Radio Paris points to the presence of American troops in Liberia, to the addition of 50,000 white French saldiers to Dakar’s normal 10,000 European population, to a 700-mile British raid from Lake Chad to Benghazi-and to the map. Daker, that map proclaims, is, -militarily considered, four things: The ideal Axis springboard for air attack on South. America, here only 1800 miles distant; the perfect fuel-base for a submarine noose by which to strangle "Britain’s . Life-Passage" down the Atlantic to India and Egypt; a possible 7. ae —

"Eastern Hawaii" protecting America’s entire Atlantic coastline; and the land-and-sea security for a direct overland route to Egypt across Africa’s waist. But behind these strategic considerations which we all see instantly these days as if by effortless instinct, French West Africa is for most of us a map blank; Liberia is a name-if that; while Dakar, for all the miles of comment ‘vritten about it these last two years, remains a strangely impalpable place for a worldpivot. We never meet anyone who has been there. And rumour-de Gaulle’s débacle of September, 1940, the con-vict-built trans-Sahara railway, German "Fifth Column" domination, etc. etc.creates only the bafflement of an incomplete jigsaw. However, I happen to work alongside a man who has been in Dakar, I have encountered eye-witness accounts

of the. railway-camps and of de Gaulle’s strange "flop"; and I have cross checked against each other the still more recent impressions of American business visitors, Here are my siftings, A City of Peanuts Dakar is built on peanuts. As your ship approaches its low white houses, they tise in hills »along the docksides. As you cross Cap Verde’s peninsula- neck proceeding up country they pass you ‘on camelback .and donkeyback in long strung-out caravans,

And as you try to sleep, the whirr of the double-shift shell-ing-machines drives you to distractionor to the brewery that is, save them, the only factory in the city. For a little city it is, with a normal population nearly that of Dunedin and a swollen one to-day as large as Wellington. But only one man in seven who passes you is white, though all are legal and loyal Frenchmen, electing their Negro deputy to the Parliament in Paris. The climate is steaming rain for six months from a never-

blue sky, followed by a pleasant semester of winter. And since one cannot live on nut-oil, the region is fed almost wholly from overseas — rice (in the past), from Indo-China, everything else from Marseilles. From Dakar’s backdoor stretches, right across to the other side of Africa, the enormous grass belt called the Sudan. To-day it supports 50,000,000 Africans. Some day it may be the ranch and the wheatfield of Europe. Across the Senegal River, 150 miles to the north, the Sudan fades into the bare rock and sand of the Sahara, which, also Africa-wide, cuts it off completely-except by sea via Dakar and by two recent roads to Tim-buctu--from the fertile Frenchified Mediterranean Coast. It is also cut off from the sea to the south-this time by jungle. The Sudan grassland ends, in fact, right on the crest of the hills which follow round the Coast of Guinea at 100-200 miles distance. A succession of

British, French, Portuguese, and American Guineas occupies their wet, malarial seaward slope. Firestone’s Negro Republic Yes, I wrote "American." For Liberia began life as a real official colony of freed slaves from U.S.A, And today, 120 years later, the only independent State left in Africa, a member of the League of Nations, and a Negro Republic. in which Caudasians may neither vote nor hold property, Liberia is still in effect, a dependency of the United States. When, many years ago, | Harvey Firestone leased its * best million acres to grow his tyres, the loan he raised was backed by Washington as a Federal Security. And to-day, when "protective invasions" and the like are revealing the vast gulf between Great (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) Powers and all lesser States, and are teplacing Nationalism by Continentalism, a mere 15,000 black ex-Americans ruling 2,000,000 bush natives must take their politics from Uncle. But why, you ask, send troops to Liberia when we cannot get enough of them elsewhere? "Bamako" may be the answer: Bamako being a small native town 500 miles the other side of the forest grassland. Here the Sudan-drain-ing railway from Dakar jis at its nearest to the Guinea Coast. Dakar is defended from land attack by the tortuous Saloum River to the south (see map), and by over a hundred miles of unbroken surf beach to the north; the plan might be to cut the railway that is the only route for supplies. The Free French and British forces lying round Lake Chad might then take over the Eastern Sudan and leave the Dakar half of French West Africa to starve on peanuts. Frenchmen All And if France naturally clings to her Sudan, why does French West Africa

cling to Vichy? The-half million socalled Senegalese troops do it because they are trained to obey; and because the French Colonial administration-far-_ seeing, efficient, and free from colour prejudice-has made Frenchmen of them all. Besides, the West African Whites have painful if proud memories of September, 1940, also. When Metropolitan France capitulated, they were all for fighting on, and a launch sent to Dakar might have aligned all their resources under the Cross of Lorraine, Dakar then-and hence the whole Sudan-lay helpless. before any expedition that might have been sent against. it. But by the time de Gaulle arrived with his small armada, various units of the French fleet had arrived, with *planes and shells. The Governor (who had lost a leg to the Germans in 1917), was ready, and determined. "France," he said, "has confided Dakar to me, and I will hold it against all comers to the end." "The end" is perhaps optimistic, but he has certainly held it so far.