NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 41, 18 February 1943, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

TUNISIAN DELAY

EFFECT ON ALLIED PLAN

There is no further great Rus- , sian victory to announce today, and the democratic world, exhilarated by the Rostov-Kharkpv-Voroshilovgrad series, may feel a trifle disappointed. The feeling had become something like that in England in 1759, after a year of triumphs in the Seven Years' War, when the wit Horace Walpole observed, "We are forced to ask every morning what victory there is for fear of missing one.'* The war in Europe is far from that stage yet. There are limits to the power of Russia, as correspondent* soberly note, while the American reverse in Tunisia is likely to impose a delay on Allied plans to invade Europe. The fall of Rostov, Kharkov, and Voroshilovgrad in quick succession probably marks the end of one phase of the Red Army's offensive in South Russia and the beginning of another. The main objective of the first phase was the breaking of the Axis "hedgehog" line from Orel to Rostov, and this was achieved by a series of separate drives from different' points converging on the main "hedgehogs!' and partially encircling and eliminating them. The new phase will be, perhaps, formation of a common Russian line, probably pivoted on Rostov and extending well up to Orel, swinging generally south-west to reach th« Dnieper and force the retreating Germans against the river, dividing the enemy in two at the easternmost elbow of the Dnieper between Dniepropetrovsk and Zaporozhe and trapping the southern Axis armies in the Crimea and the angle between the lower Dnieper south-west of Zaporozhe and the Black Sea, which the Dnieper enters at Kherson. Such a strategic plan would help to explain why the Red Army has so far apparently been in no hurry to take Taganrog, which is only about 50 miles west of Rostov, and well to the east of the KharkovCrimea railway. If the Red Army can reach'the Dnieper—and they are less than 100 miles away at one or two points—the fate of the southern Axis armies will be practically settled. Allied Setback. The Western Alliesh-Britain arid America—are not yet in Europe. If they were—almost anywhere—the European war might well be over this year and that before next winter. But the considerable Allied setback in Tunisia looks like deferring the prospect for weeks, possibly months. In Central Tunisia the latest German thrust has pushed the Americans, in the words of the broadcast, "back some 30 miles along a front 50 miles broad." The Americans regained some ground in a counter-attack, but lost it again and more "in the face of heavier armour and waves of dive-bombers;" Allied air forces have evacuated three of their forward aerodromes "and will operate from prepared fields further back at maximum strength." It looks as if our allies in this region had suffered a bit of a Bull Run, meeting, as they did, in their first encounter in the European theatre of war, without much previous- experience of actual fighting, probably the pick of the German forces, veterans of Continental and desert campaigns. The loss of ground will no doubt be rectified and the iosses of men and material avenged, but the Axis will have achieved, its immediate purpose of gaining elbow room at the most critical point in their front and of delaying the liquidation of Tunisia, a process essential to any invasion of European coasts of the Western Mediterranean. Like an Island. Axis Tunisia is really like an island off the coast of Europe, standing to Southern Europe as the British Isles do to Western. The Sicilian Channel corresponds to the English Channel. If the Axis Powers held the British, Isles it would hardly be possible to oust them from Occupied Europe, and if they can hold out long enough in Tunisia they will make the invasion of Europe from that quarter all the more difficult by the coastal fortifications and other lines of defence they may be able to prepare in the time gained by staving of! the Allies in this corner of Africa. The Allies, of course, will be able to impose a fairly effective blockade of Tunisia in the long run by surface ship, submarine, and air power, but that would take time, and time is infinitely precious just now, if the war in this theatre is to be wound up soon, so that Japan can be tackled with full Allied strength in the Pacific. In this connection the observations of the American correspondent Negley Farson and Colonel Kennedy are worth careful study. Of course Tunisia is not the only way for the Allies into Europe, but it is the best way at this time of the year arid on its rapid conquest depends to .a high degree any Allied operations contemplated in the Eastern Mediterranean for a shorter supply line than round Africa is urgently necessary if the required strength is to be accumulated. The clearance of the Mediterranean to Allied shipping is the prime essential to any successful further move. It is true that a big convoy has got through safely to.Malta, but the conditions described in the news indicate that the devoted island is not yet free from danger. Not Enough News. Knowledge of the position in Tunisia by common consent has suffered from the censorship almost more than any other theatre of war. On this point the opinion of the veteran correspondent of the "New- York Times," Byron Darnton, who lost his life in the Papuan campaign last October, is worth quoting from his last dispatch to his paper, dated October 7: A man who has spent his life in newspaper work is apt to believe that in the long run the best thing to do is to tell the truth. If the truth hurts enough, the necessary corrective will be automatically generated. Military training is likely to produce a different point or view—the attitude that the best possible face must be put on things. The matter of giving information to the enemy becomes involved in this fundamental, inescapable conflict. It is a strange thing that in a century of war, great and small, the best reported from day to day was the American Civil War. 1861-65, eighty years ago. The military authorities complained then, but the American people got the news and reacted to it. good or bad as it was, in a way that stimulated their effort to win. Byron. Darnton's conviction might be summed up: "Tell the truth and shame the devils—of propaganda and rumour."