Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1941. DANGERS FACED IN GREECE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 April 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1941. DANGERS FACED IN GREECE.

TODAY'S news from Greece shows that the Allies have maintained an unbroken front in face of ferocious German onslaughts and have inflicted enormous losses on the enemy, but it isYtated also that the Greek and British forces —the latter including Australians and New Zealanders—are withdrawing to a shorter line. Even with information lacking on many details, it is not difficult, to appreciate the tremendously formidable character of the task by which the Allied armies in Greece are confronted. One officer has summed up the positionin the statement that tank for tank our forces are better than the Germans, but that the, latter have a numerical superiority and are throwing into the battles in Greece swarms of tanks, backed up by motor-cycle troops and supporting infantry. The question seems to be whether the quantities of armoured vehicles and other materials that, are needed decisively to stem the Nazi onset can be conveyed in lime to the battlefront in Greece. We know at the moment only that all that valiant men can do is being and will be done by the Greek and British forces.

Some of the dangers the situation holds are indicated clearly. It is stated, for instance, that while the British forces have repelled all assaults on their section of the front —in positions extending westward from the shores of the Gulf of Salonika, in the region of Mount, Olympus—it is believed in well-informed quarters that the Greek Army may have to evacuate Albania, and: —

It is believed in Cairo that the situation in Albania may affect the Empire forces in Greece, and no one pretends to minimise the gravity of the position.

Deployed on a wide front, the Allies apparently are called upon to fall back upon stronger positions, if they can find and hold them, in face of an enemy possessed of a. great, numerical superiority and of a still greater superiority in mechanised weapons and equipment—an enemy, too, who is prepared and able to disregard the heavy Josses of men and material he is suffering in his advance. Taking account, also, of the effect, of the Greek withdrawal on the stability of that section of the front held by’British Empire forces, I the situation evidently is not one that can be regarded with easy optimism.

Should the fortunes of rvar turn against the Allies in Greece, as possibly may happen, an added impetus may be given to criticism like that of the London “Daily Mail” which was credited in one of yesterday’s cablegrams with an assertion that: “The country will demand an explanation of the present, deplorable strategical situation in the Middle East.” Tn brief, the London newspaper contended that the security of Egypt and the Suez Canal have been imperilled needlessly and that:—

When an inquiry is made into the Balkan and Libyan campaigns of 1941, information will be required about the activities of Mr Eden and General Sir John Dill. The public will want to know how far they were allowed to overrule the sound judgment- of General Wavell.

While assertive dogmatism on these grave questions may be as little warranted in one direction as in another, available inf ormation is far enough from providing any justification for noisy denunciations like those of the “Daily Mail.”

Anything that is for the time being deplorable in the strategic situation in the Middle East must be attributed much less to any recent redisposition of forces than to the fact that Britain, in common with her Empire partners and many other countries, was unwisely slow in awakening to the nature and magnitude of the Nazi menace. The implied contention of the “Daily Mail” that it was wrong to transfer Empire forces from Libya to Greece could be sustained only if it were held that. Britain ought to have dishonoured her pledge to give all possible aid to Greece and should have abandoned that heroic little nation to its fate.

How far Egypt, and the Suez Canal are in fact endangered remains to be seen. Much of the more recent, news of land, air and sea fighting in Libya and on the confines of Egypt—not least the annihilation by the Royal Navy of an enemy convoy bound for Tripoli and the vigorous and successful aggression of the Tobruk garrison—puts the position in a reasonably hopeful light. It is obvious that, risks were taken in transferring forces to Greece, though at, the moment those risks are rather more apparent, in Greece than in North Africa, but even in light of the situation that has now developed in Greece is it seriously to be suggested that Britain should have safeguarded her position in Libya by an act of desertion that would have made her name a byword? Having much more than held her own against an empire with a population nearly ten times as great as her own, Greece refused to be intimidated into surrender even when the forces of Nazi Germany were added, to those of Italy, and declared that if need be she would fight on unaided. It would be strange, in these circumstances, if opinion throughout the Empire did not proclaim, whatever the outcome of the critical ■struggle now in progress in Greece, that Britain was bound to give that country all the help in her power.