BRITISH DEFEAT IN SOMALILAND

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24895, 7 June 1946, Page 4

BRITISH DEFEAT IN SOMALILAND

COLONIAL POLICY AMONG CAUSES LONDON, June 5. Field-Marshal Lord Wavell, in a dispatch on the Somaliland operations in 1940 published in the London Gazette, said that the failure to hold Somaliland against, the Italians was principally due to British insistence on “running our colonies on the cheap,” especially in defence matters.

The dispatch, which was submitted to the Secretary of State for War on September 12, 1940, 26 days after the .British withdrawal from Somaliland, gave three other causes:

(1) The slowness of the War CabirielT in the first eight or nine months of the war to allow proper precautions to be taken against the possibility of Italy entering the' war, resulting in long delays in reinforcements and essential equipment arriving and the refusal to allow a proper intelligence service for fear of provoking Italy. (2) The collapse of French resistance at Jibuti.

(3) The almost complete lack of port facilities at Berbera. • The War Office, in a preface to the dispatch, emphasises Lord Wavell’s problem of disposing his pitifully small resources, but points out that Britain was then facing a desperate situation caused by France’s fall.