Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, MARCH 22, 1943. PROSPECTS IN TUNISIA.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 March 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, MARCH 22, 1943. PROSPECTS IN TUNISIA.

jTREELY as it lias been admitted that the Axis forces in Tunisia have achieved a certain amount of success in delaying actions, it may be doubted whether anything that has happened in that way has greatly affected the position and outlook in the North African theatre or the immensely important bearing of North African developments on the total course of the war in Europe and much further afield. To some extent the thrusts and 'counter-thrusts of past weeks have been a matter of give and take. Rommel is said to have sprung a surprise on the Americans in his recent successful attack on the Faid Pass, but the Americans, with some assistance from the Eighth Army in the way of diversionary action, have since had their revenge in a drive which has taken them into and well beyond Gafsa, along a road that runs behind Rommel’s right flank and reaches the sea at Gabes. Apart from the extent to which time necessarily has been spent in developing communications and bringing up supplies, weather rather than enemy action appears to have been the principal factor which has delayed full-powered action by the Allies in North Africa. Some of the latest reports received show that the free movement of armoured and other heavy vehicles in parts of Tunisia has been hindered by rain and the resultant sodden state of many roads. .With matters in this state, however, Allied air and sea forces have been striking heavily and with effect, not only at the enemy’s immediate bases, communications and concentrations, but al his transport routes and depots on the mainland of Italy and on the intervening islands. As an addition to the attacks made on great ports like Naples and Genoa, the destructive raids now being made on Italian railways no doubt are a highly significant indication of events and developments in prospect. ■ It is of particular interest, too, that heavy raids have been made from time to time on Cagliari, in southern Sardinia. It has been suggested that Sardinia may well provide a better' gateway to the‘ltalian Peninsula than Sicily. As one commentator pointed out recently: “Sardinian) air bases are only 116 miles from Rome and 260 from Naples, and the only way of protecting Sardinia is by naval action oi the kind the Allies are seeking.” Nothing else is to be expected than that the Allies will seize the earliest reab opportunity—an opportunity that must be determined in an important degree by entry into the period of settled weather —of striking at the enemy in North Africa with all the force at their command and with the idea of making use as swiftly as possible of the North African coast as a springboard for an invasion of Europe. Warlike preparations for the later and larger phase of this enterprise are visibly in progress although the initial phase of the conquest of the remaining enemy bridgehead in North Africa has yet to be undertaken. Thus far the enemy has made good use of his excellent north-south communications along the coast of Tunisia, and, at a price of his contact with-Italy by a short sea and air passage. The task now facing him, however, is that of not only withstanding concerted attacks by the Allied armies in north and south, but of safeguarding his long coastal communications against attack by way of the six great valleys running across Tunisia. The Allies have a maximum incentive to strike with all their power in North Africa. The clearance of the southern shore of the Mediterranean will not only enable them to act in effective concert with Russia on the European mainland, but will be a long step towards opening the Mediterranean to the secure and unhampered passage of sea convoys, with repercussions that will make themselves felt over a very wide field —not least in Burma and the Pacific.