Anticipation at Madagascar

For once the British made an effort to get there first: this week they announced that they were laying hands on Madagascar. Thus, on the heels of a Hitler-Mussolini meeting that seemed to presage some great new evil (see p. 29), and a parley of Madagascar-hungry Japanese diplomats in Vichy, the British anticipated one likely Axis move.

The Japs unquestionably wanted Madagascar, for Diego-Suarez, the French naval base at the northern end of the island, is the key to the western half of the Indian Ocean. Diego-Suarez snuggles in a broad, lighthouse-studded bay, and it affords the navy of the nation which controls it a fully equipped submarine station, a 26,000-ton capacity drydock (nearest equivalent: Southampton, England), radio stations, a largely equable climate, a military hospital, a good water supply, a big power plant and meteorological station.

Madagascar is potentially a great air base, too. The 980-mile-long island has four well-equipped major fields, at Diego-Suarez, Ivato, Fort Berge, Majunga. The island's 35,000 white population has been said by some to be 98% anti-Vichy but its governor for some months has been an ardent Vichy-man who has put De Gaullists in jail.

The real significance of Madagascar is that its lee shore shelters the 250-mile wide, heavily-trafficked Mozambique Channel, which, if the island were in Jap hands, would seem to Allied shipping like the neck of a bottle of poison. From the island the Japanese could play hob with Allied shipping bound either for Suez or India. But for once the Jap had been beaten to the punch.

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