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Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 December 1943, Page 4

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GENERAL EISENHOWER’S PREDICTION OF ALLIED VICTORY IN EUROPE IN 1944, COMMENT ON ITALIAN CAMPAIGN. (By Telegraph—Press Association—uopyrignt) (Received This. Day, Noon.) LONDON, December 27. In predicting, as reported in an earlier message, that the Allies will win the European War in 1944, General Eisenhower (Allied supreme commander in the west) said: “1 know we have a terrific job, but we will do it. A temptation always arises to qualify such predictions, but I am resisting this impulse.” General Eisenhower was speaking at a Press conference in Algiers, before leaving for Britain to take command of the second front invasion forces. He said his first personal job would be to duplicate what he had done at his North African Headquarters—the welding together of the directing team in such a way that there would never be any difficulty of command between the Allies. Refuting rumours that the Italian front wag settling into inactivity, General Eisenhower indicated that it would disappoint those planning a western invasion if Italy failed to continue as a theatre of aggressive operations.

Referring to his recent visit to the front lines, General Eisenhower said he had once again been amazed at the way in which both British and American soldiers' had. accommodated themselves to the appalling conditions and managed to keep a good heart. “Our advance to Rome has been disappointingly slow,” he said. "We are once more in a period of dirty slogging against a heavily-resisting foe, and the tempo of our progress northward will depend more than anything else perhaps, on the quantity of reinforcements the German Command decides to hurl against us.”