A FAR-FLUNG BATTLELINE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 84, 6 October 1941, Page 6

A FAR-FLUNG BATTLELINE

"For 1300 miles -across the Middle East," partly in Africa and partly in Asia, "stretches the Allied army." In this sentence a correspondent draws a picture of the line of force which Britain and her allies have thrown across vital portions of two continents in order to confine Hitler's Germans in a third continent, Europe. The length of our line is evidence of the strategic advantage the Germans enjoy in striking from their European centre outwards; the Allied forces on the perimeter of the circle, placed there to stop Hitler, have to deal with an enemy who well knows the advantages of operating on interior lines and of using the initiative. Hitler's aim is to thin the Allies' front by extending it, and he uses Japan for that purpose, compelling Britain and her allies, not only to occupy a long semi-circle in the Middle East, but also to accumulate great forces; —human and material—on our flank at and near Singapore, vis-a-vis Japan. With such an immense dispersal of effectives through Africa and Asia and round half the world, our military disposition, Hitler hopes, will have weak points and will break down. But Britain, shouldering the heavy job, draws on the great resources of her own country and America, and draws on the man-power of many lands scattered all over the globe. The response of these many races to Britain's appeal has a meaning that is moral as well as material.

The New Zealand Division in the Middle East is sharing in an adventure which includes Australian, Polish, Czech, South African, Indian, Free French, and Greek troops. The "batch of New Zealand airmen andi sailors" who have just arrived at Singapore will find there some of the above nationalities, and others as well. Why are so many races, colours, and creeds with us? Because we are not the aggressors, and because our* war-cause is eminently just. When has there ever been a juster war? In an outburst of megalomaniac candour Hitler settles the war-guilt question when he says:' "It was'clear that England?s friendship could not be secured, and therefore / decided it was better to have war when I was in charge of the affairs of Germany." To stop the world-criminal Hitler all nationalities not under German subornation now link themselves with Britain in a unifying war, and later—on the same basis of justice—in a unifying peace. When Litvinov represented Russia on the League of Nations he coined the phrase: "Peace is one and indivisible." Dr. Dalton, British Minister of Economic Warfare, now adapts this phrase to war as well, as to peace by affirming that "the war is one and indivisible, either on the Russian plains, in the Middle East, in the sky over Britain, or in the Battle of the Atlantic." The Kipling phrase, "our far-flung, battle-line," was never more relevant to hard

facts than it is at the present moment. Hitler's strategists prof ess < to see in this dispersal our military weakness, but Britain sees in it an encirclement that Germany has hrought on herself. Hitler's mission was to unite the world. He has done it— against himself. This unity has more than a war importance. Surely it is a striking portent of the future.