Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 1941. A BATTLE AT GREAT ODDS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 April 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 1941. A BATTLE AT GREAT ODDS.

the position in Northern Greece is reported at time of writing, the Greek and British forces are fighting a tremendous rearguard action. They are maintaining an unbroken line and inflicting enormous losses on the enemy, but are engaged in a movement of withdrawal of which the limits are not yet. indicated. The Allied armies, and not least the New Zealanders and Australians who were lately defending positions on the slopes of Mount Olympus, have given such proofs of their fighting quality that the present state of affairs obviously is accounted for only by the enemy being able to bring to bear a. great preponderance of numbers and weight ol material. It is not in doubl that, with the odds in these particulars at all even, the campaign would be taking a very different course.

Some of the later reports speak of the Allies being reinforced with new troops and supplies, but it is stated also that the situation is regarded as serious, The possibility of holding any considerable part of Greece against the Germans and their jackal ally no doubt is contingent upon the further and considerable reinforcement of the Allied armies. Whether adequate reinforcements of men and material can be thrown into the scale in time is meantime an open question.

With the great military highway through the Morava and Xardar valleys, in Yugoslavia, freely al their disposal, the Germans of course enjoy a very considerable advantage in the matter of communications and it seems likely that the most valiant, efforts of the Royal Air Force, in the strength in which it is operating at present in the Balkans, can at best only modify that advantage. Since the Allies have been compelled to withdraw from the mountain passes in the area extending westward k from Mount Olympus to Albania, it must be. supposed that heavy additional forces would be needed to enable them to hold any line extending right, across mainland Greece. There are some possibilities of continued resistance and defence, however, even if they should be thrown back on the peninsula occupied in great part by the territories of Boetia and Attica. With the remnants of the Italian fleet, cowering in its ports, too, the Germans may find themselves faced by new and serious obstacles in attempts to master the Peloponnesus and many of the Greek islands.

Even the occupation for the time being of a considerable part of Greece would leave the Axis gangsters in any case considerably short of the decisive results which alone would .justify, from their standpoint, an expenditure of lives and material like that, being made at the moment, in Northern Greece. The vita] objectives of Axis strategy in the Middle East are the oilfields of Irak and Tran and the Suez Canal. It may be that the Nazis regal’d the invasion of Yugoslavia, and Greece as a means to the end of intimidating Turkey and that at. any moment, they may turn their arms against that country. Britain is bound to take full account of this possibility, and of the German threat by way of Libya to Egypt and the Suez Canal, even while giving Greece all the military and other help in her power. Then, again, if has to be remembered that the Germans are possessed of interior land communications and, that at any time the forces now being poured into the Balkans could be switched back to Western Europe. It is a matter of ordinary prudence to recognise, as Air Churchill and his colleagues have insisted over and over again, that the Nazis may be driven in desperation to attempt the invasion of Britain they certainly would have attempted long-ere now had their perceived any prospect of success. Nothing is better established than that the Nazis can never win the war unless they are able to defeat. Britain in her home territory and in the region of her vital sea c’omm.unieations. Much as Britain has at stake in the Middle East, she cannot afford to weaken her home defence and the defence of her Atlantic communications in order to strengthen her land, air and sea forces in the Middle East.

The total situation at the moment is one of heavy strain, but the strain is very far from being only on one side. It may conceivably be shown by later events that the Nazis are marching’ towards assured and inevitable defeat even while they are gaining ground, at a price, in Greece.