TEST YET TO COME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 April 1941, Page 5

TEST YET TO COME

INITIAL NAZI SUCCESS IN BALKANS MR CHURCHILL’S SURVEY PRAISED. NO NEED TO BE DOWNHEARTED. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, April 10. Summarising information disclosed by Mr Churchill in the House of Commons and other later reports. "The Times" says: "The first onrush of the German mechanised columns —a true blitzkreig —has proved once more overwhelming in spite of the difficulties of the Balkan terrain. Salonika has fallen, northern Greece is cut in half, the Yugoslav communications are severed at Skoplje and our allies in the west of the peninsula are isolated from their friends, the Turks. The first three days of the campaign must have realised the highest hopes the enemy may have entertained.” There is unanimous praise in the Press of the tone and temper of Mr Churchill’s review. The “News Chronicle” points out that there is no note of depression, though Mr Churchill scrupulously emphasised every adverse factor in the situation. The “News Chronicle” itself, after surveying these, including first the successes of Germany in the Balkans blitz, concludes that there is no need to be downhearted if a comparison be made with the situation last summer, and what we have since achieved. “Let us remember that' the fortunes of war swing backward and forward, that Hitler does not shout his own difficulties from the housetops, and that the power of the vast but uneasy Nazi empire can never equal the developed strength of America and Britain,” it states. "That is the final guarantee of victory.” The "Daily Express” makes the interesting point that a clash between the German armoured troops and British, whether in the Balkans or North Africa, will be the preliminary test showing whether the struggle must be longer or will be shorter. "Once there is evolved an armoured division which can master a German armoured division the war is over,” it states. From that it follows that “if oui' armoured vehicles are not up to the work of beating those of the Germans, then the sooner we prove it in action and build others the better.”