"UNEQUALLED"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 109, 10 May 1943, Page 3

"UNEQUALLED"

ALLIES* TRIUMPH Praise For British In Greatest Military Feat Rec. 10.30 a.m. RUGBY, May 9. "British troops are the finest in" the world," was the view expressed by Lord Croft, Under-Secretary of State for War, when' opening" an" 'army exhibition at Reading on Saturday. He said: "That is why the Axis, whose great armies we have so largely destroyed all over East Africa and the Western Desert will soon be driven into the sea out of the last yard of the Continent of Africa. "Our Eastern pincer has come 3000 miles from Kismayu in the southern point of Italian Somaliland, through Abyssinia, Eritrea, Egypt, Libya, Tripolitania and Southern Tunisia— a feat unequalled in all military history. It has been supplied at a distance from 10,000 to 14,000 miles. Never before in all the great stories

of the war have armies fought to victory over such a vast span of ocean and land communications." Continuing what he said was a "thumb-nail sketch," Lord Croft recalled that we fought the Germans "in Norway, Belgium, France, Greece and Crete. In all these campaigns, though hopelessly outnumbered, we nevertheless upset the rhythm of German strategy and simultaneously we triumphantly conquered the whole of the Italian Empire. "We fought decisive campaigns to liberate Madagascar, to reconquer British Somaliland, and by hard fighting we restored Syria to the Fighting French. We advanced into Southern Persia. We sent forces to join our Indian armies in the defence of India. We fought two hard campaigns in Burma and, deprived of sea power andiat the mercy of the Axis air superiority, we fought at Hongkong, ■ Malaya and Singapore. "These latter outposts," Lord Croft added, "are, for the time, in enemy hands. When we have settled with Enemy No. 1 we will go to the aid of the gallant Anzacs and Americans in the east and purge the world there also of the human rattlesnakes which have brought so much mir°ry to mankind."