ITALY AND AFRICA

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 10, 13 January 1941, Page 6

ITALY AND AFRICA

Italy's African Empire, conceived by Mussolini in his grandiose plans to extend, like that of the Ancient Rome of the Caesars, from the Mediterranean to the southernmost shores of the Red Sea, is visibly crumbling away under the relentless onslaught of British arms. In the north, General WavelPs army, fresh from its victory at Bardia, is sweeping westward round Tobruk, now isolated from any relief by land, and threatening Derna and even Benghazi on the western side of the peninsula of Cyrenaica. In the south, the British Imperial forces, with the large South African army in Kenya, are harassing the Italians along the frontiers of Eritrea, Abyssinia, and Somaliland. Inside this vast area the natives are rising in rebellion against their oppressors. Both in the north and in the south the Italians had accumulations of troops fully equipped and numbering probably over half a million, half in the north and half in the south. Mussolini's plan was a huge pincer movement to enclose and crush Egypt. It is possible that the Italians, if they had moved quickly at their entry into the war, might have gone far towards achieving their objective. They did advance both in the Sudan and from Libya, but the movement was too late and too slow. The British had time to strengthen their forces and struck first and decisively. The swift progress of the campaign in Libya has ibeen due to the perfect co-ordination of all the arms, land, sea, and air— above all, air. The British campaigns in Africa have confirmed the lessons of the German campaigns in Europe that air power is the decisive factor in modern war, that command of the air is essential to victory, and that j with it victory may be swift and cheap. That is why the issue for Britain in 1941 is the attainment of mastery in the air.