The Press MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1943. Italy’s Plight

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23973, 14 June 1943, Page 4

The Press MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1943. Italy’s Plight

Italy’s propagandists cannot disguise the desperate straits to which she is now reduced. Dr. Gayda, braving it out, still writes of Italy's war aims; but they are not stated as the propagandist of Fascist ambitions used to state them. These are almost meek, by comparison His Nazi partners assure the German people and the Italians that they know how to treat invaders. But whether the Germans are greatly cheered by the assurance or not, the Italians have excellent reasons to doubt it. They are underfed and disorganised. Their confidence in their leadership, weakening for years, is now at the ebb. Their cities and ports are under systematic bombardment, ineffectually resisted. The threat of invasion has come very near and, with the fall of Pantelleria and Lampedusa, is nearer still. The Italians do not know, and cannot know, where the next blow is to fall—against Sicily, against the mainland, against some remoter part of the Mediterranean front. Their uncertainty is part of the danger they feel, and cannot feel less acutely because Mussolini has declared that 100 divisions are ready to defend Italy. He will, perhaps, be fortunate to muster 60, and these not of the quality that was too low to hold the Italian Empire in Africa. About 20 divisions, which formerly garrisoned Italy’s Adriatic conquests as far south as Greece, have recently been withdrawn to Italy, with others from Russia and Jugoslavia. If it is true that Italian forces have been withdrawn from the southern Dalmatian sectors, the Axis will face a difficult strategic problem, for it will have left under the control of Jugoslav guerrilla forces a considerable belt of territory south of the central Jugoslav provinces. Without regard for that, however, it is clear that Italy has insufficient troops to defend both the homeland and her Balkan conquests. The well-concealed direction of United Nations strategy, however, is not disclosed in the success of the sustained bombardment of Pantelleria. It is an important success because it establishes a new forward base for air attack on Sicily and Italy, because it knocks out one centre of enemy action at the western end of the Mediterranean, and a most powerfully organised one, because it proves the effectiveness of combined naval and air bombardment, in certain conditions, without land support, and because it strikes another heavy blow at Italian morale. It must tend to “ draw ” the Axis south and west. - But though the attack may point the way that invasion plans go, it does not by any means necessarily do so. The range of invasion points in the Mediterranean is still wide. The argument between invasion south and north' is still open. And so is the possibility that invasion on one coast may precede and mask the major attempt on the other.