Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, DECEMBER, 2, 1940. ITALY'S NAVAL TACTICS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 44, 2 December 1940, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, DECEMBER, 2, 1940. ITALY'S NAVAL TACTICS.

Mussolini’s conceit that the Mediterranean is an Italian lake has received one or two severe rebuffs lately at the hands of the Royal Navy in operations in which the Fleet Air Arm played its part worthily. On each occasion on which Italian naval units , have been sighted by British warships the most conspicuous feature of the enemy tactics has been skill and dispatch in retirement without attempting to seriously engage their opponents. But it is not only at sea that the Italian Navy has suffered loss. Even in the supposed security of fortified bases its ships have been subjected to aerial bombardment by the Fleet Air Arm, sustaining such damage as to be either destroyed or put out of commission for a considerable time. Naturally neither the Italian nor the German authorities give the true picture, representing the escape of the Fascist warships as a masterly manoeuvre against overwhelming odds and minimising the nature and extent of the loss sustained in harbour. The distortion of facts by the Germans and the Italians is deliberate, not meant to affect the morale of the British people, but to influence neutral opinion throughout the world, to impress the people of the Balkan States, and, more especially at the present moment, to influence the attitude of Turkey. The Balkan States are either so dominated by the Germans, or so much under their control that the repercussions of naval warfare will not make much practical difference, but in the case of the Turks there is .a possibility —though not a probability —of NaziFascist propaganda having-such influence on the public mind. It would be folly for Britain to rely on the probability and ignore the possibility, and to guard against any weakening of the pro-British sentiment it is essential that the facts should be widely known throughout Turkey. With the Turks* genuinely favourable to Britain there exists jn relation to strategy in the Balkans and the Near East a restraining consideration, the importance of which it is difficult to over-estimate.