NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 92, 19 April 1941, Page 10

NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

BATTLE OF GREECE

ALLIED LINE UNBROKEN

SHORTENING THE

FRONT

The fiercest fighting of the 1 Avar is raging now in what may ' be called the Battle of Greece, j V The Germans, with increasing--, numbers and with every weapon'/ ' in their armoury and every ii method in their science of war- <- fare, are battering at the Allied : front, held by the British Em- - pire forces on the right (Aegean side) and the Greek' army on v •the left side (Adriatic). The - main attack is around Mount ': Olympus, on the extreme right, with the object of penetrating'to the. Plain of Larissa in Thes- ;; saly, and thus cutting off re- ;' treat. Further west the Greeks ;. are stubbornly holding the Kala- j. baka Pass into Western Thes- j saly. So-far, heavily outnum-j bered in men, tanks, and aero* r planes, at least dive-bombers, \ the Allies have held their line . ; intact with a view to a gradual J withdrawal and retirement to a . shorter line of defence. No Indication of New Line. What this line will be is impossible to say, for there is no indication, naturally, in the news. If the withdrawal means the evacuation of the Thessalian Plain the new line may be from somewhere near the Gulf ofArta on the Adriatic along the Pindiro and Othrys Ranges to the Gulf of . Volo. .This is a defensible and shorter . line, used in past wars for the defence of Greece. It is forty or fifty miles south of-the present front, and there are other intervening lines which might be held to permit of an ■ orderly withdrawal. It is obvious that weight of numbers and difficulty of communications imposes extra strain, in the holding of j the present line. ' i ■ Difficult Operation. The operation of withdrawal to a new front in the teeth of enemy pressure is one of the most difficult in warfare and often entails the'sacrifice of rearguards. For/ these: the public must be prepared. The great thing in warfare is to save armies from being overwhelmed or forced to capitulate. British military history has few examples, if any, of capitulation on any; large scale, such as the French at Sedan and Metz in the Franco-Prus-sian War and their collapse in the present war last year. But of successful retreats our military annals have many stirring examples, and in almost every instance the retreating army has survived to win in the. end. The Allies in Greece are pursuing the • right tactics in holdingup the enemy's advance and relentlessly bombing his concentrations and Communications so that the arrival of reinforcements and supplies can be slowed down- Moreover, the infliction of heavy losses on the attackers has a similar effect after a time in causing pause while more men can arrive and replace exhausted, units. The same argument, of course,, applies to a lesser extent to the defenders. It must be remembered that there is no Maginot Line in this part •, of Greece. Greece's only line of that character at all was the Metaxas line for the defence of Macedonia from the Bulgarians, and this in the present German onslaught held and was holding long after it had been outflanked and Salonika itself had fallen. Though, the outlook remains very serious in. Greece, there is no ground for despondency. The Greeks themselves are hold- - ing on in the spirit of Marathon and Thermopylae, and we can do no lessfc than emulate them' in this respect ) New Air Tactics. 1 In a brief note in this column yes* terday on the German air raid on London, comment was made on the spe* cial difficulty of countering dive-bomb-ing tactics at night. It is clear from, subsequent English comments that the inefficiency of ,the London defences against the great swarm of enemy air* craft, of which only six were destroy^ ed, has aroused grave concern. Yet those defences must be as good / now\ as they have ever been. They havef . been countered by new enemy tactics^ principally dive-bombing and low-fly* ing attacks. The balloon barrage which surrounds London is a sort of palisade of wire ~ cables- —widely spaced, but an effective barrier because the wires are invisible . —designed to force raiders to fly over; it. This brings them into a stratum which can be made into a danger zone by bursting shells, and also reduces the vast space in which defending fighters have to work. But the Germans appear to have dodged the perils of the splinter-filled zone by diving down through it; and low-flying aircraft are extremely hard to shoot down from the ground at any time, let alone at night. Night Fighting- in the Air. From time to time optimistic statements have been made about the development of night-fighting methods, but those statements must be takert with reserve, in the light of actual results. Hints have been given of mysterious devices of a deadly nature; but the reported enemy losses have been credited to the gunners on the ground (who may, of course, be using special types of shells) and the night fighters. When an anti-aircraft gun hits ..an airt craft the gunners have their luck to thank rather than their skill. But the night fighter has to get right ther.e. He has to see his enemy, and be neaß , enough to get at him. Searchlight, and; fires in the bombed area, help him, but his<greatest friend is the high moon. Alt in all, on a night raid the scales are heavily loaded in favour of the .attack; and there has never been any doubt of this in the minds of students of aerial warfare. Two Schools of Thought. In consequence, there have been two "schools of thought" in regard to aerial warfare in Britain. One favours giving the maximum possible protection to the.home country by means of fighter craft, to minimise the enemy's destructiveness, and this view was practically , endorsed by the terrific punishment which forced the Germans to give up heavy daylight attacks. But' fighters cannot do such deadly work at night. The other party argued that, since - bombing" and destruction will inevit* ably go on, the best answer, is to put. all possible power into retaliation and divert much of the material and energy from the fighter organisation^ into bomber squadrons. The home defence theory passed its test against daylight raids, but it has not passed in the, night operations; and the longer the enemy can go on attacking with small' loss; the/ stronger will be the publiß> . for.reverse action,. ,y' . : "■. -