NO REASON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 May 1943, Page 3

NO REASON

NOT TO EXPECT LONG WAR THOUGH GERMAN COLLAPSE POSSIBLE. STATEMENT BY MR CHURCHILL. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, May 23. The Prime Minister, Mr Churchill, has given a warning against banking on any quick collapse of Germany. In an informal address to the staff of the British Embassy in Washington he said that there was no reason not to expect a long war. While it was possible that the proud German Army could collapse as in the last war and as it did recently in Tunisia, there was no reason to expect a sudden decision.

The latest message from Washington says that President Roosevelt and Mr Churchill are devoting the weekend separately’ to the consideration of the reports of the military staffs on the further conduct of the war. The nature of the recommendations is not disclosed, says the Washington correspondent of the "New York Times,” but he, adds that the opinion is held generally that the proportion of emphasis on the European and Pacific theatres of war will have to be decided.

NEXT GREAT BLOW IN THE MEDITERRANEAN OR ELSEWHERE. OBSERVATIONS BY BRITISH MINISTER. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 22. Speaking at Aidershot, the Minister of Production, Captain Lyttelton, commented: “I know where the blow (against the enemy) will fall. Perhaps it won’t fall in the Mediterranean at all.”

Captain Lyttelton said it was no coincidence that we had suffered reverses in the first three years of this and the last war. “It is because peaceful nations cannot mobilise their manpower, tools and industry in very much less than this time.”

Referring to the theory that to bring the Continental war to a quick end a great maritime Power like Britain must be allied with a Continental Power which has a great army, the Minister said that last time France had been the Continental Power, but this time it was the great Continental armies of Russia, allied with our own stranglehold over the ocean seaways, that would one day see the flag of the Axis Powers struck from the walls of the fortress of Europe. ENEMY DEFENCES ATTEMPTS TO SAFEGUARD WEAK SPOTS. LONDON, May 23. . The Axis forces are forming an antiinvasion zone 17 to 30 miles deep along the Mediterranean coast, including Nice and other Riviera resorts, according to Algiers radio. A German Storm-trooper regiment has arrived at Ploesti to reinforce the defences in the Rumanian oilfields, says the Soviet news agency. The Rumanian troops, except for the gendarmerie, have all been withdrawn. Nobody may enter or leave the area without a permit, and Gestapo patrols are checking people's papers and searching workers and have arrested a number in the suburbs of Ploesti.