SICILY SUCCUMBS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 06, Issue 100, 20 August 1943, Page 4

SICILY SUCCUMBS

THE spectacular race between the American First Army and the British Eighth Army to reach Messina has now concluded with the honours going to the men from the U.S.A. The conquest of Sicily may now be said to be complete in spite of the Berlin radio broadcasts which as ever seek to turn defeats into technical victories by describing the route as "a successful withdrawal." The kingdom of Italy, deprived of its colonial strength, of all its island outposts, and seething with open revolt and dissatisfaction with the Badoglio regime, stands in the background a stunted and disillusioned people hoping and praying for peace at any price. Jhe fall of Sicily has practically cut the Empire in two and the bag of Axis prisoners variously computed at between 200,000 and 300,000 gives new colour to the melencholy tale of the action. Its possession ensures completeness to the control of the Mediterranean and also supplies a large number of first class landing fields for the further prosecution of the R.A.F. raids over enemy territory. Its fall has probably gone much further than that, for it has undoubtedly clinched Turkish allegiance to the: Allied cause and has silenced the pro-Axis voice of Fascist Spain. There can be little doubt, but that Franco, had the watf gone more favouraMy for Mussolini, would have felt jn duty bound to comply with the ceaseless Italian demands for action against Gibraltar and along the Mediterranean coast line. The Sicilian campaign has clinched all these things and further has brought our armies within a stone's throw of the very heart of the Italian Empire—Rome itself.