FIGHTING STOPS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 90, 17 April 1941, Page 7

FIGHTING STOPS.

EAST AFRICA FRONT.

Italian Envoy Flies To Parley

With British Leader.

LOXDOX, April It!. The Abyssinian war entered the last stage yesterday when the Italian Commander-in-Chief in East Africa, the Duke of Aosta, requested safe conduct for an Italian aircraft in which an Italian envoy later landed at Diredawa aerodrome, says "The Times" special correspondent at Aden. British officers met him and while the parley proceeded not a single British bomber took the air. Fighting paused throughout the front.

Now that victory has been gained in East Africa it can be revealed that the boot might have been on the other foot but for brilliant British policy in the opening weeks of the campaign, says the "Daily Telegraph - ' correspondent at Addis Ababa. The Italian forces in East Africa were about 250,000 and the British strength in the Sudan, British Somaliland and Kenya was not comparable to this.

The Italians at any time between •June and September last year could have made a sortie with the odds heavily 111 favour of tlieir getting wherever they wanted. British officials in the Sudan were worried that the Italians might have followed up their •July successes after capturing Kassala, Gallabat and other frontier positions by a mechanised push against Khartoum and Atbara, which is the Sudan's vital transport centre. This might have resulted in the loss of the country within davs.

The secret of the British avoidance of disaster lay in the commander's aggressive patrolling and rapid shifting ot small forces, leading the enemy to believe the opposition was ten times the actual strength, even while machineguns were being mounted in Khartoum and tank traps du£ around the city.

A British company moved to the frontier and the Italians immediately began referring to a British division opposing them. A couple of Bren gun carriers moved up and tie Italians transformed them into squadrons of tanks.

By the end of 1940 the Italians were unable to strike, which was the moment for a British offensive. Addis Ababa was won equally on the heights of Keren as on tire sands of Somaliland, because British pressure in the heart of Eritrea forced the Italians to divert from Addis Ababa their complete reserve troops and Almost &11 their pros.