GREEK COLLAPSE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 108, 2 November 1940, Page 10

GREEK COLLAPSE

APPARENT FAILURE

TURKEY & BULGARIA

48y; Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) (Received November 2, 2 p.m.)

LONDON, November 1.

The war between Italy and Greece was continued today as primarily a diplomatic struggle in which the Axis Powers are apparently pinning their hopes on a Greek collapse.

Military operations are reported to haye brought the Italians 16 miles within/Greek territory on the road to Janina, but the Greeks claim that all Italian attacks have been repulsed.

The Axis, judged on its propaganda, still hopes that the Metaxas regime and its military opposition to Italy will crumble, and this is interpreted throughout the Balkans as the reason for the "kid-glove" handling of the invasion.

The Italians have raided Athens twice, first of all attacking Piraeus, the seaport of the capital, and then Tatoi, the, airport of Athens, but they are repor/ted to have failed to hit military objectives. Twenty-five Italian raiders visited the Gulf of Corinth, and batteries shot down two planes. The damage done was slight. Salonika was also raided.

. Other reports suggest that Italian hopes are failing in two direction, first, to lead the British into another Norway "failure," and, second, to lead the. Turks to move troops into Grecian Thrace. Turkey is maintaining strong positions on the Bulgarian frontier and exercising a modifying influence on Bulgarian Germanophiles and military hot-heads. The Turkish newspapers continue plainly to warn Bulgaria to stay out of the conflict. Informed circles do not doubt that Turkey will fight df Bulgaria goes to war in league with the Axis or allows German troops to move across Bulgaria.