LOSS OF CRETE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1941, Page 6

LOSS OF CRETE

MR HORE BELISHA’S CRITICISM “SERIES OF INCOMPATIBLE EXPLANATIONS.” AT,LEGATIONS OF FAILURE & NEGLECT. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 1.40 pan.) LONDON, Juno 6. Urging the nation not to tolerate soporific propaganda aimed at covering the loss of Crete. Mr L. Hore Be-lisha, in a speech at Edinburgh, declared that the bare description of what the Imperial forces had undergone in Crete aroused not only the deepest emotion but serious foreboding. "We .suffer defeat after defeat, always for the same reasons—lack of appreciation, lack of preparation and imperfect execution of a project,” he said. "Each reverse is glossed over by the same series of incompatible explanations. Surely it is improvident to allow the Empire's best lighting material to be immolated through" lack of foresight and precaution and constant misjudgment. The Germans launched the most formidable air invasion ever made from aerodromes in Greece which the British authorities had previously claimed were inadequate for the R.A.F. to support the fighting forces in Greece. An Air Ministry spokesman scouted the idea of a successful airborne invasion of Crete but we were ousted after an attack lasting for twelve days. Our naval losses in this campaign must have been considerably greater than these of the Italians at Matapan." Mr Hore Belisha urged the formation of a single Allied council to direct Anglo-American industrial effort nd said the most hopeful assurance of the democracies’ determination to establish a nav otdei would be the recognition now of a common citizenship by the 1 British Empire and the United States. I