Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1942. APPROACHES TO VICTORY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 November 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1942. APPROACHES TO VICTORY.

WHILE it has been duly and wisely emphasised of late by Mr Churchill and other leaders of the Allied nations that the remaining power of the Axis gangster dictatorships has yet to be measured, there can be no doubt about the remarkable extent to which the war outlook has brightened, on both sides of the world, from the standpoint ol’the United Nations., lhe Pacific and Russia have their place in the picture of improvement, but it is in Africa and the Mediterranean that events are most obviously taking a course heavily adverse to the enemy. Germany is making great efforts to stem the powerful attacks developed by the Allies from Egypt and from the bril-liantly-conceived and executed landings in French North Africa, but already the operations taking shape in Libya and lunisia bear impressive witness to the extent, to which the initiative has been seized by the Allies and to the defensive character ot the enemy action. The Axis must rely largely upon air power in its attempt to retain the Tunisian bases and Tripoli and control of the Sicilian narrows of the Mediterranean. Since, however, Germany was decisively beaten in the air in the days when she was free to concentrate her then numerically immensely superior air forces against Britain, her prospects of success in North Africa and the Mediterranean, where she has to reckon with the great and expanding forces of both Britain and the United States, evidently are not promising. Iler failure to win decisive success in Russia and the necessity she is under of being prepared to.meet air and other attacks on a great scale m Western Europe further darken her outlook. Questions of exceptional interest, as the .war is now developing relate to the position of Italy. While their deflated dictator, Mussolini, probably feels able to do nothing else than humbly obev the instructions of his Nazi masters, the people of Italy possibly may be able to do something to hasten their escape' from the truly terrible position in which they now find themselves. They are in the plight foretold and promised by Mr Churchill in the warning lie addressed to them nearly two years ago. The British Prime Minister said to the people ol Italy on that occasion : — C..r armies will tear your African empire to shreds and tatters We shall be forced to come to much closer grips . . . Why nave you placed yourself in the path of this avalanche, now only just started to roll forward on its predestined track. Today the avalanche predicted by Mr Churchill is sweeping down on Italy. Already her centres of war industry are being blasted and devastated'by British bombers doing a round trip of 1,500 miles from their home bases. But if events take the course that is to be expected in North Africa it will not be long before everything that is worth bombing in Italy will be attacked constantly, from short range, by British and American bombers.

If they were free to form their own decision and to act upon it, the people of Italy no doubt would submit forthwith to the Allies. Their country remains ostensibly a partner m the Axis, and actually an enslaved province of Germany, because they are meantime at Germany’s mercy. Sooner or later, however, a stage will be reached at which it will be less, dangerous for the Italian people to revolt against Mussolini and his Nazi masters than to endure the continuation and development of Allied attacks.

These facts give full point to the political warfare with which the Allies are supplementing their military operations against the Axis in the Mediterranean. Whatever possibilities of revolt exist in Italy no doubt have been quickened and stirred by the recent announcement of the American Government that Italians in the United States are not henceforth to be classed as enemy aliens, and also by the appeals official and unofficial American spokesmen have made to the Italians to overthrow their tyrants. Italy and the Balkans are likely m any case to be gateways of Allied attack, but it is open to. the people of Italy to shorten the period of their own sufferings and to expedite the course of the United Nations to victory by acting' at the earliest opportunity upon .the excellent advice they are getting, particularly from the United States.