ENEMY FAILURES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 October 1939, Page 5

ENEMY FAILURES

ALLIES’ UNHINDERED PREPARATIONS PENETRATION OF THE SAAR IMPORTANT. STRATEGICALLY AND IN OTHER RESPECTS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day. 11.7 a.m.) RUGBY, October 14. The military correspondent of the Swiss newspaper “National Zeitung” says the most amazing feature of the war in the West is that the Germans have done nothing to prevent the arrival of the Allied Armies in their positions, the organisation of lines of communication and the mobilisation of war industries. Germany’s opponents, this writer points out have completed these movements with the precision and calm of manoeuvres, and it is thus now too late to hinder them. In the same paper, a picture is presented of the Siegfried Line as intact and unscathed by the French bombardment. It is not doubted here that Germany would have preferred the French to launch frontal attacks, producing large casualty lists, but the British are at one with the French in realising that military operations are not the most important part of a war effort in its early stages. By conducting methodical war, the French have achieved at a very small cost in casualties results the great value of which cannot be gauged merely in terms of ..depth of penetration. Saarbrucken is an important railway junction and the fact that it is now surrounded on three sides and that all its roads and railways are under the fire of powerful French artillery, solidly established on surrounding heights, is of as great value strategically as the capture of the town., The significance of the French advance of course goes far beyond immediate and local results. It is appreciated in Britain that the presence of French troops on German soil has deeply affected the morale of the Rhineland population. Over two million souls have been evacuated from this region—and this manifestation of the power of an enemy in their own territory is an experience the Germans have not endured, during the progress of a war. for over a century. The economic consequences of the French advance are also seen to be of the greatest importance. The Saar industries have been brought to a standstill, depriving Germany of as much coal and iron as she has obtained in Polish Silesia. With these solid achievements to the credit of their arms, as well as a growing mastery of the sea and air, the Allies are not likely to fall a prey to discord, the possibility of which Nazi propagandists, by rather clumsy methods, suggest.