THE AXIS IN SYRIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 81, 2 October 1940, Page 8

THE AXIS IN SYRIA

What is happening in Syria today has a peculiar and rather poignant interest to New Zealanders and Australians, who played a leading part in its conquest in 1918, as a sequel to the earlier Sinai and Palestine campaigns of 1916-17. In that conquest the French had only a small token force. Yet in the allotment of mandated territory at Versailles France took the lion's share of the whole of Syria, while Britain was left with the problem of turbulent little Palestine and its racial feud of Jew and Arab. Today a French Government, without any real authority or power, is asked to yield to an Italian Commission in Syria, also without any force behind it on the spot, concessions which may threaten the British hold on Palestine. These are said to include a complete demobilisation of all French troops in Syria, the delivery of French aircraft to the Italian Dodecanese Islands, and the surrender to Italy of the port of Tripoli as a naval base.

Today it is reported from Cairo that the Italians have presented further and far-reaching demands directed towards giving Italy and Germany a further grip on Syria. It is uncertain how far in this quarter the Vichy Government has gone, or will go, in its pusillanimous policy of subservience to the Axis, but the experience of Dakar and French North-west Africa is disquieting. In Syria there is not even the excuse of force majeure, which might be pleaded in extenuation of the surrender of Indo-China to Japan. It is clear that the Axis Powers are using the Vichy Government, with some skill and success, as an instrument to obtain by diplomacy footholds overseas which they could not hope to win by force in the face of the British Navy's command of the sea. Syria, like Dakar, is a place of great strategic importance, opening up, as it does, a way to the Middle East and the Mosul oil fields and so cutting off land communication with Turkey, as well as offering a base for attack on Palestine and Egypt. It is a question how long the anomalous position of the Vichy Government is to be allowed to hamper Britain's, successful conduct of the war.