GAINS AT ENORMOUS COST

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 143, 17 May 1940, Page 6

GAINS AT ENORMOUS COST

(United Tress Association. —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 15. Military opinion in London is not disquietened by the development of the situation in the Low Countries. The collapse of Dutch resistance is regretted, but it was not unexpected. The Dutch have put up brave resistance to superior forces. The Dutch Uoreign Minister (Dr Van Kleft'ens), in a statement in Paris, revealed that the Dutch Army had suffered most severe casualties and nearly the entire Dutch air force in Europe had been destroyed. The British and French General Staffs reckoned last September that a development on these lines might take place, and the delay of eight months has given them valuable time in which to prepare for meeting them.

The passing of those eight months has afforded the Allies a.n opportunity to make up much of their leeway in aircraft production, while it has afforded the Germans little or no opportunity of replenishing their precariously limited stocks of vital war materials, such as petrol. The footing which the Germans have sccureu at enormous expenditure in life in the French defensive zone near Sedan is not regarded !>y exports as a serious danger. The main emphasis, indeed, is laid on the tact that the heaviest attacks are yet to come. The dogged Belgian resistance is enabling the Allied forces to make their dispositions on a line stretching from Antwerp to Sedan, ' and covering Brussels. The tactics of the German Command, while they have secured some important early successes in penetrating the defences, are criticised in some quarters, and it is suggested that they are liable to entail serious difficulties when used against heavily-mechanised forces well protected from the air such as are now being brought to bear by the Allies in Belgium. These methods of using powerful “wedges,” moving at- their own speed, have undoubtedly obtained remarkable results when * used in conjunction with effective air superiority against the relatively lightly-armed forces of Poland, Norway and Holland. But, if once the wedges are held or driven back, the very tact of their being highly mechanised is bound to involve strain. if