The Dakar Misfortune
Any lingering hope that when the Prime Minister came to explain the Dakar episode he would be able to put some better complexion on it was dispelled by his words in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The whole fiasco, it is clear, was due to the strange decision of the authorities at Gibraltar to give free passage to six French warships from Toulon, bound, as it turned out, for Dakar and carrying with them " a number of Vichy partisans, evidently of a most bitter type." On this Mr. Churchill was something less than illumi- nating. It was, he said, the policy of the Government not to interfere with French warships unless they appeared to be proceeding to enemy-controlled ports; and that was the ex- planation officially tendered at the time by the Ministry of Information. The Gibraltar authorities apparently applied this policy (for Dakar could not then be described as an enemy- controlled port). Yet what Mr. Churchill says of them is that " by a series of accidents and some errors which have been made the subject of disciplinary action or are now subject to formal inquiry," the approach of the warships to Gibraltar was not reported to London till it was too late to stop them. There the matter must be left, with no pretence that it was anything but a bad business, resulting in the loss, it may be hoped only temporarily, of an important strategic position which would have been of great value to us, and which in other hands may become a great danger to us. The Prime Minister rightly insisted that no reproach lies against General -de Gaulle in the matter, and his declaration that the Govern- ment would not abandon the cause of the Free Frenchmen till it was merged in due time in the general cause of France was wise and timely.
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