WAR SURVEY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 June 1941, Page 5

WAR SURVEY

OPERATIONS IN AFRICA & MEDITERRANEAN VITALLY IMPORTANT RESULTS. LAND AND NAVAL CO-OPERATION (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, June 25. In a survey of the African fighting’ Colonel Walter Elliot said that in the eastern Mediterranean the Nile Delta was being held in strength and the strength of the enemy around it tested while clearing the flanks in the south and the east. How great was this work of clearing our southern flank in East Africa was not generally recognised. The campaign now approaching termination had cleared not only the land flank but the sea flank, both being of vital importance. To clear the Axis forces from the shores both of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean was a task which was undertaken and could only be undertaken by land forces, and it was a striking example of how armies and navies were indispensible to each other's strategy. On the western flank in the Western Desert a heavy probe was recently undertaken against the enemy forces’ positions. The sialwart campaign which had been and was being carried on at Tobruk was another example of the interdependence of land and sea power.

At the present moment the northern flank in Syria was being cleared. It was a hard enough decision to go into Syria and harder still for the Free French. The lesson of this war was that it was a war of quality, quality of men and quality of equipment rather than numbers. The quality of the British equipment was first-rate and the quantity was rapidly coming forward. The quality of the men was, according to all observers, very high.