BRITISH AND FREE FRENCH ATTACK DAKAR. While the bombing of London goes on (now in its eighteenth straight day), Wednesday’s headlines point southward -- not to an Axis offensive in the Mediterranean, but instead a combined British-"Free French" assault on the port of Dakar, the capital of French West Africa. According to the Associated Press, French troops loyal to the Petain government have repulsed six attempts by Allied soldiers to land at Dakar, as British vessels "opened a new and prolonged bombardment" of the city. The "Free French" commander, General de Gaulle, says the attack is being made "because German and Italian officers had seized control of the Dakar air base, which is only 1,000 miles from South America."
David Darrah’s account in the Chicago Tribune goes into more detail of the battle -- the Allies gave an ultimatum to the French high commissioner at Dakar, who responded with a bitter declaration he would defend Dakar "to the last ditch." Evidently British shelling caused "heavy losses" in the port, while a French submarine damaged a British cruiser and was later sunk. As a reprisal for the attack on Dakar, the Petain regime has subjected British forces in Gibraltar to their "worst bombardment of the war" by French warplanes.
It’s not all-out war between Britain and the French regime at Vichy, and it probably won’t be – Petain’s government is too weak to withstand a resumption of hostilities. But sometimes it looks awfully close.
ONLY THE U.S. CAN STOP JAPAN. Barnet Nover writes in Wednesday’s Washington Post something every American should hear as fighting continues in French Indo-China. The expansion of Japanese power, he says, is as great a threat to American security as Hitler’s victories, and that Japan’s empire has been headed down this road even longer than Germany has --
"Indo-China is a far-away country, well off the beaten track. Yet what is happening there today may affect the lives and fortunes of every American. For the course of aggression in Asia, as the course of aggression in Europe and Africa, has no visible limit...Japan’s invasion of Indo-China has many facets. In part, it is a manifestation of an insatiable urge for conquest. In part it is the expression of an old and never abandoned policy of southward expansion which began with the annexation of Formosa in 1895 and has gone on side by side with Japan’s effort to establish her hegemony over China. What is of immediate significance is that the occupation of Indo-China would enable Japan to attack the armies of Chiang Kai-shek from far closer range than has been possible during the last two years. It would also make possible the permanent closure of the Burma Road, the last remaining artery connecting China with the overseas world....Furthermore, Indo-China could serve as a useful base of operations against the Dutch East Indies."
Mr. Nover recommends the U.S. take economic measures to stop the Japanese Empire before her plans proceed any further -- "At the moment Japan has nothing to fear from France. She has little to fear from Great Britain. The only nation she is afraid of is the United States. For through the exercise of economic power which until now we have carefully avoided using against Japan, we could enormously increase the difficulties in the way of the island empire’s aggressive course. In so doing we would be defending vital interests which we can neglect only at very great peril."
DON’T SEND FOOD TO EUROPE. Major George Fielding Eliot warns in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune that as winter approaches, America will be urged to send food to rescue millions of civilians who will be facing famine in Nazi-occupied areas of Europe. It’s a call we need to resist, as hard as it will be to do so --
"We shall be told, and rightly, that these are the innocent, that they have done nothing to bring upon themselves the fate that has befallen them; and we shall be besought with the invocation of of all those urgings of generosity which have always made so great an appeal to American hearts, to succor those starving peoples of Norway, of the Netherlands, of Belgium, of France, and, perhaps, of other lands. This appeal, however persuasively presented, however highly sponsored, we must in our own higher interests, in the interests of our own country and our American way of life, steel our hears to resist....We shall, of course, be told that if we do not feed these peoples, Germany will not do so either, and so they will simply starve. This contention will not bear examination – one reason for the starvation, present and to come, is German looting of all available supplies, and if we send more into territory where the Germans rule and where their word alone is law, they will loot that too. We shall be assured that the Germans will solemnly undertake to do nothing of the kind; to which the only possible reply is that any one who at this late date puts faith in Nazi promises is certainly allowing his heart to run away with his head."
AN UNHERALDED BATTLE. It was expunged from the Congressional Record, but last week’s issue of Time magazine recorded for the ages one of the small skirmishes in Congress’s fight over conscription the other week. It involved Representative Beverly M. Vincent of Brownsville, Ky., a pro-conscription congressman who decided he’d had enough after listening to one fiery isolationist rant too many --
"Vincent was besieged in his office by a harpy-like group of women who said they were from Kentucky...and grew so bitter in their denunciation of conscription that he had to throw them out. Then, with the rest of the House, Representative Vincent had to sit through an equally violent denunciation of conscription by small, red-faced Martin L. Sweeney of Ohio...[who] declaimed that conscription was a scheme to deliver the U.S. to the British devils. When Representative Sweeney finally ran out of gas, he sat down next to Representative Vincent. It was too much. ‘I’d rather you would sit somewhere else,’ quietly said Beverly Vincent. When Sweeney bristled, Vincent added, ‘You are a traitor.’ Words passed. Vincent called Sweeney a --- -- - -----. Sweeney swung at him. Taking careful aim and with obvious satisfaction, Beverly Vincent planted a good hard right, smack! It staggered, and silenced, Martin Sweeney. Though Congressmen not infrequently threaten one another and have been known to throw bound copies of the Record when vexed, ancient Doorkeeper Joseph Sinnot said it was the best blow he had heard in his 50 years in the House."
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