STRATEGIC IMPORT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 257, 27 September 1940, Page 7

STRATEGIC IMPORT.

HAPPENINGS AT DAKAR. (British Official Wireless.) - RUGBY, Sept. 25. The events at Dakar, says the Yorkshire Post, must be viewed as part of a wide web of strategic manoeuvre stretching from Africa through the Mediterranean to Indo-C'hina. “In the view of the Axis Powers and Japan the French colonial empire is ripe for dissolution,” says the paper. “Germany and Italy mean to use some of it for establishing a new order in Africa and the Near East and Japan dreams of a new order in Asia which will include the Dutch East Indies and perhaps the Philippines. The privileges she is trying to secure in Indo-China are not required merely to 'help her wage war on the Chinese. “These far-reaching prospects are hidden from the people of France, who are told that the Vichy Government is determined to keep the French empire intact. All the men of Vichy, in fact, are doing is to preserve all they can for the convenience of the aggressor countries, whose intrigues they are powerless to restrain. “Herr von Ribbentrop’s visit to Rome was concerned with the Axis plans for action throughout the vast area from Syria to Dakar. Senor Suner in Berlin was receiving instructions as to the role mapped out for Spain in these ambitious undertakings. She is to be given the territory of French Morocco in return for assisting in the assault on Gibraltar.

“Mussolini wants Tunis and Syria from France, together with Egypt and the Sudan. West Africa is preserved for Hitler. He would be able to look across the Atlantic toward the Americas, a prospect which the New York Times, writing on Dakar, has not over looked. He would be well placed also to set about ‘liberating’ South Africa with General Hertzog’s aid. ‘■Dakar is the keypoint of these widespread schemes, and if General de Gaulle’s action turps out well not only will West Africa be saved for France, but the rest of the French Colonial Empire will be powerfully influenced to abandon the useless protection of Vichy.”