CAMPAIGN AGAINST SUEZ

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 November 1940, Page 9

CAMPAIGN AGAINST SUEZ

PART OF iWIDER PLAN. AN AMERICAN WRITER'S VIEW. Watch the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. Not the English Channel, not Gibraltar, not Italian East Africa, the Sudan or Kenya, but the Near and Middle, East. In a matter of days or weeks it will become the main theatre of war, writes “The General” in the American newspaper, “P.M.” The arguments and assumptions of this writer become particularly interesting at a time when the Italian attack on Greece gives a further- clue to Axis intentions.

To defeat the British Empire (he wrote) Hitler must reduce the citadel of England itself and/or break the Empire’s back. Cracking the British Isles at this stage by direct action—which means invasion—has apparently not proved feasible.

A Nazi move in another direction is therefore to be expected. A drive through the Balkans into the Near and Middle East, backbone of the British Empire, and on the overland route to the jewel of the British Crown, India, is most likely. The Italian campaign against Suez seems to be only part of a wider Axis plan, whose success would have tremendous repercussions. Numerous Signs of Storm. !

Signs of the coming Eastern storm can be discerned aplenty, despite the fact that Berlin, in line with its usual technique, has been industriously pointing in every other direction.

The whole recent invasion scare was based on Nazi “preparations” so obvious as to be suspicious from the start. Whenever the German general staff seriously intends to invade England, convoys of troopships and barges will not sail openly along the coast to “jump off” ports. The stage properties which may have been just old scows (no bomber pilot can tell the difference), said quite plainly: “Don’t look here. Look, somewhere else.”

By means of the invasion scare and .he bombing of London, the Nazis have

pipned down the main British forces. The British High Command has had no choice in the matter, for at no time has it dared take a chance that Hitler would not invade.

Swedish Report Explained. One recent mystifying news dispatch that can now be explained is the Swedish report that commandeered small boats and barges have been returned to their Norwegian owners. The British have already been pinned down long enough to suit the Nazi purpose. The Eastern drive must be very near. This does not mean that the bombing of English cities will soon cease. Air attacks reduce war potential and are no help to the morale either of rich property-owners or-the poor who must take most of the beating. The other direction in which the Nazis are pointing too visibly is Gibraltar. Franco’s brother-in-law, Ramon Serrano Suner, is now in Berlin—very publicly so. He and the Nazis may be discussing arrangements for an attack on The Rock—but later, not now. These are only a few of the puzzle pieces. The others fall neatly into place. A few days ago “Pravda,” Moscow’s official party organ, said war was coming to the Balkans. “Pravda’s” editorial writer didn’t guess. He knew—by way of the Soviet Foreign Office. At the time of the signature of the recent Nazi-Soviet > treaty regulating relations along the two Powers Polish border, it was indicated that important exchanges of information between Moscow and Berlin were taking place and would continue. It is now clear that these conversations must be concerned with the projected Nazi Bal-kan-Near East campaign. With the liquidation of the Rumanian problem there could be nothing else that requires extended Berlin-Moscow discussion.

Germany’s unseemly haste in acquiring Rumania s air and mechanised division bases in Rumania likewise fits into the picture. The bases are more than a. warning to Moscow to stay away from. Rumanian oil. Rumania appears to be slated as one of the jumpoff points for the Reich’s most ambitious military undertaking. The Axis plan, if indeed an eastern drive is the Axis plan, raises a great, number of specific military, political, and other questions. Britain’s best chance for disrupting the plan lies in halting the Italian advance on Suez right now. before German troops come storming south-eastward to split the numerically inferior British Near Eastern force. Halting the Italians quickly will not, however, prove easy. War over three continents —Europe, Asia, and Africa—sounds H. G. Wellsian. But the prosecution rests its case.