IN THE NEAR EAST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 January 1940, Page 6

IN THE NEAR EAST

GREAT ARMY MASSED BV ALLIES READY TO MEET ENEMY THRUST. WEYGAND IN COMMAND. (By Saville R. Davis, Staff Correspondent of “The Christian Science Monitor.”.) WASHINGTON. December 28. An Allied Expeditionary Force which is variously estimated at between 200.000 and 300,000 seasoned troops lias been quietly assembled in the Near East, basing on Syria. It now stands ready to bolster Turkey and the whole eastern front in the event of any major expansion by .Russia or possibly Germany, in this area.

Information to this effect has reached the United States Government through its own military and diplomatic channels of information. It checks with reports which have been seeping out of London and Moscow.

In the opinion of military and diplomatic observers here, a substantial show of Allied force on this south-eastern front might prove to be one of the decisive factors in the outcome of the war. Turkey has cast its lot tentatively with Britain and France. ' In fact, as it is recalled here, it was the failure of the Allies to send troops in force to the Near East which has generally been ranked as their major strategic blunder in the World War. One by one; all the nations on the Balkans and East Mediterranean which might have supported Britain and France were forced to come to terms with the Central Powers because there was no military support for any resistance which they might have put up. CHANGE FROM WORLD WAR. Today's expeditionary force based on Syria is believed here to represent a serious effort on the part of the Allies to reverse the picture in the current war. It has been built up under the direction of Franco’s redoubtable Gen. Maximo Weygand, who was the World War Chief of Staff for Marshal Ferdinand Foch and later High Commissioner to Syria. It consists in good part of hardened and toughened colonial units, drawn from British and French garrisons in Northern Africa and India —men who are professional fighters of the most rugged sort. It is being well equipped for fast movement as transportation facilities in that area permit and for modern mechanised warfare. It would operate in conjunction with the Turkish Army,, whose regular forces of about 160,000 can be increased by its reserves to a war strength of 700,000, and with the British and French naval forces in the Mediterranean whose present disposition is kept secret. Thus the makings of a formidable Near Eastern force now are present and taking shape. General Weygand and the Turks face a strategic situation which is tense but. by no means clearly unfavourable to them. It has been reflected here week by week in military and diplomatic reports from these areas approximately as follows: Russia for some time has been massing troops in the Caucasus, which is the strip of land reaching down between the Black and Caspian Seas to the frontiers of Turkey and Iran, formerly called Persia. This is the great oil pool of Russia, of incalculable value to the Soviet in wartime. Within 100 oi- 200 miles of the Turkish and Iranian frontiers are the most important of these oil fields as well as the pipeline from Baku to Batum, through which much of Russia’s petroleum flows.

VULNERABLE TO INVASION.

This area is as vulnerable to destructive air attack as Germany’s steel empire in the -Ruhr Valley, and more vulnerable to actual invasion. British troops occupied the region for a period in the last war. Meanwhile, to the south of the Caucasus and east of Turkey lies Iran, with its own rich oil fields which are chief suppliers of the British and French. Allied pipelines run south to the Persian Gulf and west to Haifa in Palestine and Tripoli in Syria. Those in turn are under the shadow of Soviet bombardment. And Russia for some time has been exerting pressure on Iran in every way possible, seeking to threaten the Allied oil supplies and to make of that country a military counterpoise to Turkey, and more lately, to the Syrian forces. These are the local issues. Larger questions of the Near East revolve around the degree of support which the Allies can give, or are willing to give, in the event of a German or Russian or joint move into the Balkans.

The question of whether Turkey, the Allied navies and forces in Syria and elsewhere would seek to make a stand in the Balkans is so uncertain at this time as to remain in lively doubt. Very likely the difficulties involved and the fact that the armies are still in the stage of expansion would indicate that something more than a Bessarabian campaign would be necessary to bring this about.