Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1941. QUESTIONS THAT MUST WAIT.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1941. QUESTIONS THAT MUST WAIT.

J7OK 11 number of reasons the course of war events in the Near and Middle East is ol‘ supreme interest and concern to the people of this country and Australia. It could not be otherwise when the best of our youthful inanhood is ranged in these regio,ns with the forces defending Empire communications the vital importance of which is nowhere belter understood and appreciated than in these South I'acifie Dominions.

Clearly as we are able to perceive what is at stake, however, we know hardly anything about the lines on which the Mediterranean campaign is likely Io develop, in itself and in its relationship to the war as a whole. Some ol the detail facts that are coming to light make rather for confusion than for an understanding of the lines on which Empire strategy is developing in the Eastern .Mediterranean.

What has been made known of the campaign in Crete, lor example, suggests that a Soviet writer, Al. IvanoiT, was within the facts’ in stating, as he was quoted in a cablegram yesterday, that: “The British military command in the Near East actually held Crete for six months, but neglected properly to fortify that important strategic position. No coastal or anti-aircraft defences of any special value were established." This appears to be supported by many accounts given by our own soldiers and others who escaped from Crete after playing their part in the forlorn hope defence of the island. It seems to be agreed on all hands that the essential fact of the campaign is that, the Allied forces were defeated because they were not and could not be given adequate air support. It has been said that it was on account of a shortage, not of aircraft, but of airfields, that Crete was lost. Another contention is, however, that it the potential airfields that exist in Crete bad been developed and defended, the forces holding them . probably could not have been displaced. So far as Crete is concerned, these questions are over and done with for the time being, but it certainly must be hoped that if there was any needless failure and neglect to stre.ngtlien the defences of that island, similar failures will not be repeated in the areas and stages in which the campaign is about to develop. A.s to this it may be noted that a special correspondent of the “Daily .Mail’’ was quoted in a message from London yesterday as staling that, * as far as is known, there are no fighter aerodromes in the island of Cyprus. The nearest one, in Palestine, is at least 180 miles away, which is too far to give proper fighter support to Cyprus. There are Syrian aerodromes within 80 miles of Cyprus, and therefore the air force which first secures them will be masters of the sky over- Cyprus. At its face value, this implies that swift and decisive action by Britain is demanded if Cyprus is; to be defended and Palestine reasonably safeguarded—the correspondent just quoted says there are only three aerodromes in Palestine compared with nine in Cyprus. The position reached at Ihe moment is one of uncertainty. British preparations to cope with the Nazi onslaught in Cyprus and elsewhere may go well beyond what is generally known. In addition, while nothing is less to he desired than that any culpable failure or shortcoming in the direction of the war should be glossed over, account Ims to be taken of the situation as a whole and of the total problems it presents. In this war, as in the last, Germany inevitably derives some advantages from her possession of interior lines of communication, but equally she may run into ultimate disaster and defeat by presuming too far on that advantage. It is conceivable that an important part of the effort, needed to defeat and make an end of the German penetration of the Middle Easl may take shape in Western Europe. TWO LABOUR VIEWPOINTS. it happens, a circular in which the Westland Labour Representation Committee contends that “coalition with the enemies of Labour in the Government, would bo the greatest disaster that could happen to Labour,’’ has' been made public almost simultaneously with a broadcast by the British Minister of Labour, Mr Ernest Bevin, to the United States National Conference of Social Workers —a broadcast in ■which Mr Bevin explained why Labour in Britain “is so wholeheartedly supporting the national effort in this great struggle.” British Labour, Mr Bevin declared, regards this as a righteous war, in which it is fighting to -preserve its spiritual inheritance and with a determination not to lie cast back into slavery. We have fought our way (he said) through miserable periods of poverty and inequality and at last arrived at the stage where all the barriers which stood in the way of the people themselves working out their own destiny had been destroyed. Mr Bevin speaks with the virtually unanimous support of the organised workers in Britain who realise, as he stated, that if the Nazi monster were not resisted ami hurled back', “our children would be condemned to centuries of struggle before they could again establish their freedom.” These are the commanding facts. What is there to be set. against them in New Zealand or in any other part of the British Empire? It is certainly as true of this country as of Britain that all the barriers which stood in the way of the people themselves working out their own destiny have been destroyed. It is as little in doubt that in New Zealand, as in every other democratic land, this freedom and open opportunity would give place to horrors of subjection ami slavery if Nazism were not overthroivn and. extirpated. In the most charitable interpretation, it is a pitiful and petifogging viewpoint that would place party advantage above the vital necessity of concentrating’ undividedly upon the task of repelling decisively the mortal threat now raised to the existence of freedom in this country and throughout the world.