French Africa has reservoir of manpower
Territory’s resources are significant in world short of supplies
Washington (UP) – (Nov. 7)
French Africa, which U.S. forces entered tonight, comprises the biggest part of the great northwest shoulder of Africa which thrusts out into the Atlantic.
The National Geographic Society pointed out:
The vast territory of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and French West Africa has an area of more than 2,800,000 square miles – or almost that of the continental United States.
The total population of more than 30 million represents a considerable reservoir of manpower. During World War I, the well-trained and picturesquely-dressed native troops of North and West Africa proved extremely valuable to the motherland both for labor and in battle. In supplies, too, French Africa contributed generously to the Allied war effort, with such essentials as wheat, wool and leather.
Resources significant
Today, France’s overseas resources of farm and pasture are still significant in a warring world short of many of the basic human requirements of food and clothing. French North Africa particularly, with its somewhat limited but intensely cultivated agricultural and grazing regions, is a heavy producer of grains, vegetables, and many fruits. Its hides, wool and cotton are valuable for boots, blankets and uniforms, as well as for the manufacture of depleted civilian supplies. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia all have mineral resources, increasingly developed, including phosphates, iron, coal, lead, zinc and petroleum.
French West Africa, stretching from the north-central portion of the continent to the Atlantic, is less productive than the North African regions, partly because of its wide stretches of rocky desert. Yet its more fertile areas provide such important supplies as rice, corn, millet, vegetable oils, cotton and gum.
Has vast coastline
Algeria, together with a tiny strip of Morocco, occupies a West Mediterranean coastline of well over a thousand miles, extending from a point opposite southeast Spain to a position just south of Italian Sardinia. Tunisia, with its once powerful naval and air base of Bizerte, overlooks the narrows of the Mediterranean across from Sardinia and Sicily.
On the Atlantic side, the French West African port of Dakar is not only the closest African base to the Americas, but it overlooks the sea lanes along which travel many of Great Britain’s economic and military necessities.
Casablanca, Morocco, is another French station on the Atlantic. An excellent artificially-made port, situated within a few hundred miles of Gibraltar, this city lies on normally busy sea and air routes to Western Europe and the Mediterranean.