Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY JANUARY 14, 1941 GREEK PROGRESS IN ALBANIA.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 January 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY JANUARY 14, 1941 GREEK PROGRESS IN ALBANIA.

<IIXCE thev smashed and rolled hack the Italian invasion ot ° their country, the Greeks have developed their counterstroke against the Italian armies in Albania with extraordinary sucooss. The achievements of the Greek forces —emphasised anew today in the announcement in Rome of the resignation ol General Soddu. who has been Italian Commander-in-chief m Albania for onlv two months —bear witness alike to higld\ skilled and capable leadership and to altogether exception:! qualities of courage, endurance and enterprise in the individual soldiers upon whom a desperately trying and difficult task lias been imposed. Winter conditions in the Albanian mountains are so severe that many people who know the country well were of opinion that military operations of necessity would be brought to a standstill and that such a campaign as the Greeks are now conducting would be an impossibility. In their defence of Albania, the Italians have been favoured not only by the strength of the mountain positions they had fortified at leisure, but by the obstacles and difiiculties that snow, ice. blizzards and raging torrents have opposed to the progress of the invaders. In spite ol all these handicaps, however. the Greeks have developed their oft'ensive so well and powerfully that the Italian hold on iSouthern Albania, with its port and supply base of Valona, has become visibly very precarious. At the same time there is at least a tentative threat to Dnrazzo and the whole of Northern Albania in the turning movement the Greeks are now developing against Elbasan. Something, no doubt, must depend upon whether Nazi Germany intends to give air and other support to Ital> in Albania, or to assist her stricken ally by attacking Greece b\ way of Bulgaria. In either of these events, even armies as valiant and as well led as those of Greece no doubt would stand urgently in need of additional support. In her war with Italy, however, Greece, with some air and naval assistance from Britain, has established a definite superiority. For Italy the war has been a chapter of unrelieved defeat and she appears to have little enough prospect, placed as she now is and relying on her own resources, of reversing the present trend of events. The history of the campaign in Albania in brief is that the Italians, with a very considerable superiority in numbers and in equipment, have been defeated and driven out ot one strong position after another. One of the greatest achievements ol the Greeks to date has been in capturing the town of Klisura and the ten-mile gorge of the same name, possession of which has for many centuries been regarded as the vital key to a secure hold on Southern Albania. In their approach to Klisura the Greeks had to tight their way over rugged and inhospitable mountain passes, storming one dominating height alter another. If, as now seems certain, the Greeks have gained complete control of the Klisura gorge, the position oi the Italians in their remaining foothold in Southern Albania has been weakened greatly. Their forces at Tepclene, some ten miles west of Klisura. and in the mountains between Pepclene and the coast, are in that case threatened in Hank. Heavy lighting in the Tepelene area is reported tqday. and a \ ugoslavian report slates that the Greeks have entered the town.

There could be no more striking proof of the weakness of the Italians in Albania than in their loss of the Klisnra gorge, for it is a position of great natural strength and its possession carries with it highly important strategical advantages. Apart from the developments on the northern front, where the Greeks are reported to be pressing towards Elbasan. the loss of Klispra by the Italians suggests that they may find themselves before long driven right back on Valona and reduced either to evacuating that port and base or to attempting a defensive stand in its near vicinity. In view of the extent to which Italian sea communications in the Adriatic have been penetrated and <ire menaced, an effort to hold \ alona in these circumstances evidently could not be regarded as very promising or hopeful. AN UNOFFICIAL VISIT. JN the visit he intends to make very shortly to London, Mr Wendell Willkie of necessity will be without official standing, but it may be hoped that his desire to meet and talk with tin 1 Kaders of the British Government and other people in Britain will be approved heartily on both sides of the Atlantic. There is mi overshadowiii’j need, in these days, ot unity on the tilings that matter most. To that unity .'dr Willkie has contributed notablv in his own country and in regard to its as-mcintion with Britain and with other nations now fighting to extirpate what Mr .Noel Coward has justly eaiied “the vile creed of aggression, barbarism and animal futility with which Germany, Italy and Japan are trying to smear the face of humanity.” Mr Willkie. in his impending visit to England, mtn Im able t<» contribute further to international unity in support of democratic ideals. His visit may be expected to appeal to people in Britain, and in otir own country and others whose la'e is identified with that of Britain, who have no thought of taking sides in American national polities, but desire keenly to reach an understanding on the broadest basis possible with the people of the United Slates in those things in which democratic nations have a common and indivisible interest, Although Mr Willkie was President Roosevelt X opponent in the recent Presidential ••I? I•• 11, elmlletigiiig the President on domestic issues and on that of tin- third term, he wax an emphatic advocate also of the policy of increased aid to P.ritain against the totalitarian aggressors, and indeed contended <n occasion that the President was not going far enough in ’ Impolicy. (in the morrow of Ins defeat, Mr Willkie railed upon the considerable sect ion ol the American electors who had voted tor him to join with their fellow eit iz.i'ii- in united support of their Government's international policy, Mr Wdlkic's an noiilieemeiit. too, of his impending visit to l.otidmi is accom., pained by the statement that he has examined President Roose, volt's Aid to Britain Bill in light oi the ciirrei:* eniorpoi;-c and has concluded that it should be adopted With moddieatioiis With memories nt what happened after the Great War, no one who Ims at heart the D-hire weltare of ;t |j democraev will wish that international policy should become again :ni I-,in- of partv polities in the I'nited States !•*<,?■ th.- -.al;.- , .'ill democratic nations the I mfej States as much a-, an;, there is ami will be need of hmm! cun'inning co <.>■•■! ~t ~.o. p..t only m winning the war. but. m shaping the mmee tha: is :«> follow. An enormously difficult and perplexing . m |>.- laced nt so shaping that peace tlm! it limy be depended upon to endure Something appreciable will he dom* to lighten ’lie t;isk i‘ the 'piestjon o| rlje.oj ,> jn! ••rii a I 1 011 ’il ere oper.i * ton ran io' lifted definite!', above part,' poll'll'-, in the l’nif-'d 8.-c.-nise lie lias ;dr".'idy <l<me .: go<m <ie ;i i t<> |i t ,o «•;.,! do more. Mr Willkie’- v.s/ l.midon should !»• welcomed iiii.-t heartJy.