NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 136, 11 June 1942, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

CRITICAL AREAS

SIEGE OF SEBASTOPOL

Sebastopol, Libya, and China arc the scenes of critical war opera tions at the moment. The Russian naval base at the western end of the Crimean peninsula lias now been under siege for five months, defying the utmost the Germans have been able to do, and is now undergoing its hardest trial. In the Libyan desert Rommel has swung his attack to the southern Bank of the Allied position, Bir Hacheim, in an effort to crush the defenders, who are Free French j troops. The Japanese effort to secure control of south-eastern China is imposing a terrific strain upon Chiang Kai-shek's forces. Sebastopol is adding another to the long list of magnificent defences of besieged strongholds. The area held by the Russians is, as a place under siege, of considerable size, and naturally very strong, against such weapons as existed thirty years ago; but today the natural defences of rough country are discounted by air attack; and the Germans hold the open territory which can be used as airfields while in the Sebastopol area the Russians have none. An enormous weight of gunfire has been concentrated upon the fortifications, but the reports indicate that, in spite of terrific bombardment and repeated infantry assaults, the defence has held firm, and the attack has been very costly to the enemy. In the Extreme North. There is news of a renewed German effort to cut off the Allies' supply route via the Arctic. German publicists have pretended that there is practically no such route; but the facts are otherwise; in spite of the difficulties imposed by the past Arctic winter and the increased risk to convoys .which now have no protection of darkness in the far north, a constant stream of supplies has travelled and still travels from the Atlantic and the North Sea to Russia's northern ports. The Germans are reported to have transferred their naval raiding base from Trondheim, halfway down the Norwegian coast, to Narvik, in the far north, and to have in hand an attempt to cut the Murmansk railway and establish submarines in the White Sea. Meanwhile, the stage appears to be set for major action anywhere on the long front in Russia. Struggle in Ohekiang. The province of Chekiang, which is the most easterly part of China south of Shanghai, is the scene of hard fighting which has been described as resulting from an effort by the Japanese to frustrate the possible bombing of Japan from the nearest available airfields on Chinese soil. It is probable that this is one of the objects of the Japanese offensive, but it is also probable that it is a secondary one. Shanghai is connected with French IndoChina by a railway which runs almost direct to Hanoi, and of which the major part is in territory which the Japanese have not been able to conquer. The great. battles at Changsha i were the result-of Japanese efforts to J extend their hold on this transport route. Sea Routes in Peril. Japan's tenure of the East Indies and Malaya, indeed, her whole situation in the conquered area, has so far resulted from the possession of unassailable sea transport on the virtually land-locked China Seas. But this immunity of sea routes is in some Gradually, the Japanese naval and air power is being whittled down by a process which now and then flares into such events as the Coral Sea and Midway Island battles. Japanese naval supremacy, even in her "narrow seas," is menaced, and Japan must recognise the fact and act accordingly. The offensive in Eastern China wears the appearance of being far more an effort to transfer the supply route from sea to land than merely to seize airfields Japanese control of airfields in Chekiang will not, of itself, save Japanese cities from bombing.