RAPID CONQUEST

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 126, 30 May 1941, Page 7

RAPID CONQUEST

ETHIOPIAN CAMPAIGN

PACE OF UNION ARMIES

GENERALS HONOURED

RUGBY, May 28,

Recalling that he had described Major-General Sir A. G. Cunningham's advance in East Africa from Kenya to Jijiga as a world's record of distance in such an astonishing time, Lord Croft, Joint Parliamentary Under-Sccretary to the War Office, speaking in the House of Lords, said: "To that record must now be added, the 300 miles to Addis Ababa and the 330 miles thence to Dessie and Amba Alagi.

"This is an advance of 1400 miles from the Kenya frontier and 1731 from the original railhead.

"There now remain only two pockets of the enemy to be cleaned up."

Lord Croft said that probably some 17,000 of the enemy were in the Gondar district, where Sudanese troops took 300 prisoners on May 17 and a further 300 oa May 21. The other considerable enemy force was in the Jimma area, where in the Battle of the Lakes last Wednesday .600 prisoners with 10 guns and five tanks were captured in the north of the district, and 4400 with 32 guns and 14 tanks in the south. THE BATTLE OF KEREN. Speaking of the "vital strategic battle of Keren," Lord Croft said that the Imperial troops assailed heights varying' from 4000 to 7000 feet with a precipitous approach. He doubted whether any troops in the world could have tackled this formidable job as successfully as the hardened troops of India, trained to mountain warfare. Lord Croft pointed out that the obvious strategy of . the Axis is to pinch out Egypt and the Suez Canal. The first essential to thwart the enemy plan was to remove from Egypt's rear the Italian armies in East Africa and prevent the Duke of Aosta from attacking through the Sudan with 250,000 well-equipped troops. In Britain there had been pride and enthusiasm at the highly successful results of this hard fighting in a war of 'continuous movement and assault against a well-equipped enemy who defended a succession of very strong positions.

"These events may well have a decisive influence on the momentous days which face the British Empire in the Middle East," Lord Croft said.

The Dominion Secretary, Lord Cranborne, in a broadcast to South Africa, paid a warm tribute to the