THE BALKAN DRIVE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 39, 15 February 1945, Page 8

THE BALKAN DRIVE

CHECK BY BRITAIN

WAS RUSSIA FORESTALLED?

BY COL. FREDERICK PALMER WASHINGTON. Looking towards Greece the real question is what Prime Minister Churchill said to Marshal Stalin and what Stalin said" to him—as statesman and warrior to warrior—in their personal conference before the British occupation and liberation of Greece . Once the British Army was in Greece no soldier of experience in combat or supply would disagree with the soundness of soldier Churchill's defence of the British Army action in suppressing the EA.M. uprising. For no Army can afford to permit civil war or guerilla warfare along its lines of communications. This is asking for casualties in the rear at the same time as casualties are suffered at the front. There must be no shortage of food and ammunition, and the crippling of forward movements by the diversion of troops to restore order in the rear cannot be tolerated. j Originally, the Allied plan included American, troops Avith British forces for an advance from Greece into * the Balkans in support of Russia after the North African and Sicilian operations opened a shorter line through the Mediterranean for lend-lease to Russia. But Russia was less receptive to the plan once she had broken the German offensive and the Mediterranean bottleneck was cleared.

Not in Russian Plans Washington withdrew from the arrangement. We had plenty to do elsewhere in preparing to carry the main burden of the liberation of France and pressing the war in the Pacific. As the saying went, we left the rest of the business of "making the Mediterranean a British lake" to the British. Russia, however, does not -want to see it made a Bsfcish lake. She wants an outlet from" her immense confined land spaces into the Mediterranean. When the British leader and the Russian chief talked together confidentially, as man to man, about the issue in which their two countries were directly concerned, how far did Stalin commit himself to Churchill's quest? Churchill has these two arguments:—

Britain would drive the German garrisons in Greece northward into the clutches of Marshal Tito and the Russian armies swinging through the Balkans. Britain would get bases for operations against the Germans in Italy on the Adriatic side and clear the Aegean of German submarines and free the last of the subjugated islands of the Aegean. Beyond that, her naval power might join Russian Army power in putting the pincers on Turkey to free the Dardanelles Strait for undisturbed passage for both Britain and Russia to their mutual profit.

Where Vital Interests May Clash As a war measure, Britain has, along with the other main ports of Greece, that of Salonika which Russia is said to covet. The northern border of Greece faces that of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, which are in the Slavic Union Russia is forming. Here, in its military implications of the play of forces in the future, is the danger point for a clash of the vital interests of two of the three great Powers which haunted the councils of Dumbarton Oaks. The E.A.M., called Leftists and Communists, are the mountain men who were the tough fighters under the Grecian dictator, Joannes Metaxas, against the Italian invasion. They carried on the guerilla warfare against the Germans, and it is in their record and nature to keep it up against the British the while they appeal for undercover aid to Moscow.—Auckland Star and N.A.N.A.