Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1943. ASSUMING THE WORST.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 January 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1943. ASSUMING THE WORST.

yyiSE words of warning have frequently been spoken by responsible Allied statesmen and others against anticipations of easy victory and against wishful thinking of every kind. Common sense and prudence demand that these warnings should be heeded, but it is perhaps just a& necessary to avoid going as far towards an. opposite extreme as did an English correspondent at Allied headquarters in North Africa, whose estimate of the situation and outlook in that theatre was cabled yesterday. He declared, in brief, that the Allies had little prospect of being able to prevent a junction of the two enemy armies in North Africa, “and their formation into a formidable force estimated at 160,000 at least, operating on supply lines considerably shorter than ours.” Declaring that the Germans will make every effort to hold the Tunisian bridgehead until the end of the northern summer and to prevent the Allies using North Africa as a base for operations against the European coastline, the correspondent added in part:— We must realise first that the enemy will within a month become numerically as strong or stronger than the Allies, with more experienced commanders; secondly, that they will receive sufficient supplies to fight a prolonged defensive action, and, third, that the Allies in Tunisia cannot afford immediately to launch a full-scale attack against the junction of the two German armies. Happily it is as far as possible from being’ established that we “must realise” any of these things. Taking only reasonable account of the rate at which Axis ships attempting the passage of the Sicilian narrows are at present being sunk by Allied naval forces and aircraft, of the experience Rommel is gaining in his runaway retreat and of many other details, it seems hardly necessary or justifiable to regard the correspondent’s estimate of the outlook in North Africa as anything else than a totally unwarranted descent into the depths of pessimism. It is obvious that the doleful picture painted is based largely not only on assumption, but on an assumption that the worst, from the Allied standpoint, is bound to happen. Only a few months ago, when Rommel and his Afrika Korps stood on the El Alamein line, it would have been easy to develop a still more dismal estimate of the outlook in North Africa, but the estimate would have been far removed from reality. In the interval, Rommel has been chased 1,500 miles or more, and if he l succeeds in reaching Tunisia he will take with him only remnants of the powerful army and masses of equipment with which he hoped to achieve the conquest of Egypt. Whatever the immediate difficulties to be faced in North Africa and elsewhere may amount to, it is not in doubt that the Germans and Italians have vastly better reasons than the United Nations for regarding the outlook with concern.