Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1943. IN THE AEGEAN SEA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 64, Issue 31, 16 November 1943, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1943. IN THE AEGEAN SEA.

The landing- of German forces on Leros Island, one of the Dodecanese group, directs attention to the importance of the area in Allied strategy. A glance at the map will show how the Dodecanese flank Crete asAhe most important points in the island screen which covers south-east Europe. As New Guinea and the Solomons cover Rabaul and the East Indies, so Crete and the Dodecanese cover the Peloponnese and the Balkan gateway into German Europe. Whatever be the prospects for a sea-borne attack across the Adriatic designed to neutralise the whole Aegean salient and Greece itself, the Dodecanese seem as likely objectives on the road to Berlin as the Solomons are on the road to Tokio. The position in the group is confused. A British force a few weeks ago seized Kos, but although there has been no official admission, the Germans seem to have recaptured the island. How effective our occupation is of Leros and Samos and what purpose it has achieved is obscure. Why our initial action in the Dodecanese was not followed by an attack on Rhodes, the principal island, ihas never been examined. The islanders have waited many years for the freedom which a British victory will bring them. Centuries under the Turk and thirty-one years of hope deferred under Italian occupation have not destroyed the Greek tradition of freedom derived from an ancient world in which Rhodes lived as an independent naval ally even when Rome was supreme in the Mediterranean.