The Dominion. SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1941. A BUDGET OF GOOD NEWS

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 157, 29 March 1941, Page 10

The Dominion. SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1941. A BUDGET OF GOOD NEWS

This morning’s cable news should serve as a weekend tonic for all who have been preoccupied by the problems of the week, both at home and abroad. Enlivening tidings, with a touch of drama about them, are to hand from two important theatres of war, as well as fiom the diplomatic field of south-eastern Europe. As has been the way of things more than once since hostilities began, events which appeared to be moving to the advantage of the enemy have suddenly changed direction. And certain of our own enterprises, seemingly fettered by new difficulties, have broken free and moved forward, closer to completion. The capture of the fortress of Keren, in Eritrea, and the town of Harar, in Abyssinia, are indeed “two smashing blows” at Italy’s crumbling East African Empire. Both points are important, but Keren in particular is a key position. It has not been taken easily, for the Italian defence was strong and desperate, but the operation by -all accounts has ended very. thoroughly, in the best traditions of Colonial campaigning. Italy’s plight on the east of. the .African continent is now a still more parlous one. Mussolini’s “Empire may be likened to a structure pierced at its points of vital support by harddriven wedges. As each wedge advances these vital ties are sundered, one by one. And there will come a moment when the structure must entirely collapse. Yugoslavia’s “bloodless revolution” presents the free peoples of the world with a victory of the national spirit snatched from the very jaws of defeat. There is an inspirational quality, above mere encouragement, in the story of a nation’s rank-and-file rallying to the standard raised by their young king in the hour of their political betrayal. Yugoslavia’s peril has not abated; indeed, it may be for the moment all the greater. But she has thwarted the fate of national extinction. The country’s decision to hold fast to independence, to defy intimidation, has been made in the full knowledge of Nazi peril, and it is therefore a decision calculated to have profound effect throughout the Balkans —on the friends of Yugoslavia, on those who covet the advantages her passive assistance would provide, and also on the unhappy communities who have been made hostages to Nazi fortune.

• No less encouraging because it is less positive, is the news of the “Battle of the Atlantic.” On this struggle, for control of Britain’s principal life line the future of the Empire may depend; and so there is epic meaning in the British Prime Minister’s message: I cannot doubt that before many months are past I shall be able to declare to you that the Battle, of the Atlantic has been decisively won.’’ Mr. Churchill is not given to either extravagant optimism, or to vainglory. And it is also to be remembered that he speaks, not from a superficial knowledge of events as disclosed to the world at large, but as. the nation’s war leader, standing at the nerve centre of British operations by land, air and sea. The Battle of the Atlantic is the crucial battle of these spring months in the northern hemisphere. We have yet to win it, but we have the assurance of a man who has pledged himself and his word to the democratic peoples that it can, and will, be won.