IT'S OUR TURN NOW

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 106, 6 May 1943, Page 4

IT'S OUR TURN NOW

CURRENT happenings in Tunisia are of the character best calculated to create a feeling of deep gratification in all countries which have suffered from the power of Germany. The feeling will be deepest in those countries which, having been longest in the war, have suffered most. Those countries experienced German military strength when it was irresistible. Nothing then could prevail over it, and it seemed for a time that nothing ever could. In Poland first, then in Norway and the Low Countries, then in Prance, and later in Yugoslavia and Greece, the experience was the same. The Germans fought, not only with overwhelming numbers, but, more importantly, with a sufficiency of the right kind of weapons. The French Army, once the finest in Europe, was routed; the British Army was driven into the sea. It seemed then to the greater part of the world that triumphant Germany could never be successfully challenged, much less defeated. The British people, under Mr. Churchill's leadership, simply refused to succumb to such despair. They were told that if they worked as they had never worked before the time would come (though after how long, none dared to think) when the German Army would be successfully challenged, and that finally it would be defeated. The time did come, at Stalingrad, when it was successfully challenged, and a colossal defeat inflicted upon it, though in Russia, as elsewhere, its power has not been shattered. But for the British a victory over the Germans gained by the forces of an ally fell short of being completely satisfying. It was a mighty help, especially in sustaining the British conviction that the Germans were not invincible, but they still awaited an opportunity to prove it for themselves. The opportunity, and the proof, came at El Alamein. There the Eighth Army demonstrated to the Germans and the world that it had all the qualities and all the weapons needed for the task. But Alamein was only the beginning. Rommel's army, though defeated, was not routed: it conducted a skilful retreat. From the prospective conqueror of Egypt, Rommel was transformed (by German propaganda) into the liberator of Tunisia! The transformation could never have deceived even the Germans. But now the army which Rommel commanded, and the forces of von Arnim, are being driven further and further into the Tunisian tip, beyond which there is only the sea. They have fought, and-will continue to fight, hard and skilfully, but the end of their resistance can only be either surrender or a "Dunkirk," though the conditions which enabled such a large proportion of the B.E.F. to escape from Dunkirk cannot be reproduced in the Mediterranean. But, though the campaign is not over, the salient fact is that in Tunisia the world is witnessing the end of a great military venture, the success of which would have brought prodigious gains to the Axis, and that it has been frustrated, and is now being finally defeated, not by ill-chance, but by the military superiority of the British, United States and French forces. The significance of that fact will not be overlooked anywhere. Just as British military defeats had their diplomatic consequences, so will this German defeat.