MALTA CAN TAKE IT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 74, 8 January 1941, Page 8

MALTA CAN TAKE IT

ISLAND’S IMPROVED DEFENCES

AMPLE FOOD SUPPLIES

LONDON, December 10

Malta can take it—and give it back to the Italians, writes Alexander Clifford, correspondent of the “Daily Mail from Valetta, Malta. I have just paid this heroic island a flying visit after an absence of three months, and .! found almost nothing changed. Two hundred air raids have not shaken the nerves of its people. Valetta’s steep, narrow streets still show extraordinarily little damage, and the people you meet in them look healthy, unhurried and confident. A quarter of a million Maltese are crammed into this island and its little neighbour, Gozo. General Dobbie, acting Governor, has just told them, “Hard fighting lies ahead and we must brace ourselves for further efforts. As the situation develops, Malta may have to show once again what stuff her people are made of.” An Effective Barrage. But the Maltese are not dismayed. I had not been here an hour before a dozen Italian aeroplanes set the sirens screaming. The people went to the shelters with no more alarm than if they were escaping a shower of rain. There is good reason for this confidence. The island’s defences are very different to-day from what they were in June and July, when Malta was the most-bombed place in the British Empire. Nowadays Mussolini’s bombers aregreeted with a barrage which almost blots out the sky with its little snowballs of white smoke.

Practically every type of Britain’s latest fighters is among the aeroplanes which take the air to repel the raiders. Work on coastal defences has gone on unceasingly. And now there are many more khaki-clad troops to man them. They showed me Malta’ k biggest crater —a huge pit which a monster bomb had dug harmlessly in a field. They told me with smiles about their biggest raid so far, when Italian aeroplanes broadcast bombs —and did hardlv any damage. There are no complaints about the food situation—Malta is actually better off for potatoes than Egypt, and there are big stocks of provisions hidden in the island, sufficient to last for a long time. But the Maltese are good eaters, and they realise that these stocks must be periodically replenished. So they line the harbour in thousands, and cheer enthusiastically when food shies put in with fresh supplies. No Petrol for Motor-cars. The petrol ration for civilians lias, however, dwindled to nil. Even taxis have disappeared, and buses are running a skeleton service. But this is not so tragic in a place where the greatest distance is 17 miles, and bicycles and donkeys go far to make up for the lack of motor transport. The Maltese are convinced they can hold out. For five months now their 120 square miles of stone-built villages and terra-cotta coloured fields have stood firm a tiny British stepping stone in the middle of the Mediterranean. And, in spite of Malta’s obvious value, Mussolini has not felt strong enough to make any attack on it apart from air raids.

When 1 left the news had just come in that two fighter aeroplanes for which the Maltese had subscribed would soon be operating from their air fields. The fighters have" been named Malta and Gozo.