The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13. 1940. ITALY IN THE ROUGH

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 42, 13 November 1940, Page 6

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13. 1940. ITALY IN THE ROUGH

It has been shown in the last few clays that Britain s ability to put “steadily increasing pressure” on Italy was not over-stated by the Prime Minister (Mr. Winston Churchill). In addition to furthei blows, accompanied by a significant freedom of movement, on tte part of British naval forces in the Mediterranean, long-range bombers of the Royal Air Force have begun to pay visits to such impoitaiu points of Italian overseas communication as Naples and Brindisi. This latter port, at the mouth of the Adriatic, is the principal supp } base for Italian land operations against Greece, through Albania, the attacks launched oil it constitute a valuable form of assistance to Greece. For her part Greece is making a magnificent and heartening showing against the invaders. Not only have Italian hopes of a swilt advance and easy conquest been dashed, but the Greeks have exacted a heavy toll in men and material, apparently at little cost to themselves While it is to be recognized that the full weight ot Italian pressure has probably yet to be developed, the importance o the present reverses is considerable. Britain is finding it possible to supplement her direct attacks on Italy with aid to Greece on land and in the air, and valuable time is being. gamed for the wider organization of such reinforcement. What is more, Greek morale vs strengthening while Fascist prestige must have suffered among the temperamental rank-and-file who do the bidding of Mussolini s dictatorship. ... , It is too soon to speak of a deterioration ot the enemy s piospects in the Mediterranean. Italy’s position, backed by Germany, is basically strong and dangerous to the Allied cause. But the hitch in and the prospect of it developing into a serious contretemps these, together with the maintenance of British coinmand ot the sea and the unimpressive Italian showing in the ait raise a reasonable question as to whether Mussolini, inflated by Axis success he has shared but not earned, has not caused the Italian genera staff to over-reach itself. Italy has a numerically stiong at my and large supply dumps in Libya, but contact with that colony has been made troublesome by British naval sweeps, and the Italian advance positions in the western Egyptian desert are under fire from the sea as well as in the air. In Abyssinia another and more difficult problem of supply confronts the Italians, and the opposition (internal as well as external) to the army of occupation there is gradually being consolidated. - , , , In the midst of these uncertainties, Italy finds her sei t. saddled with another. An unprovoked attack on Greece, obviously intended to be a Latin emulation of the blitzkrieg technique, shows some sign of developing into a dour and perhaps exhausting struggle. At the very least it promises to be a major preoccupation rather than the swift move to close-in on the Near East, which had been planned. It may be that in spite of her commitments and unexpected difficulties Italy has the wherewithal to operate on all Mediterranean-African fronts as the spearhead of German aggression in the Near Eastern theatre of war. Current events, however, are not in hei favoui. The foul game Mussolini is playing may on the whole have made some progress since the entry of Italy into the war;. but at pi esent —to borrow a term from golfing parlance—the Duce is in the rough.