Evening Post SATURDAY, MAY 1, 1943. A LULL: WAR-BIRDS IN FLIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 102, 1 May 1943, Page 4

Evening Post SATURDAY, MAY 1, 1943. A LULL: WAR-BIRDS IN FLIGHT

While the East European front and the Pacific war have relapsed into an uneasy lull, soon perhaps to be broken, the protagonists of the Second World War are fighting, in the Tunisian hills and mountains, a hand-to-hand swaying battle, which may be described as "galloping attrition' —an attrition no acute that one side must soon snap. In steep hill country, short-range fighting can be a's deadly as in jungle—perhaps more deadly, because every little Homeric combat of small forces leaves the victor in a hard-won position which can be swept at once with enemy fire, undeterred by jungle cover. Sanguinary fighting see-saws piecemeal over hill and dale, mile after mile; he who loses is he who is physically and humanly short when the balance is struck. In a very primitive sense, the Tunisian battle pivots on survival of the fittest. In the Pacific controversy, the United States Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, has made one of his occasional brief interventions, pointing out that Japanese aeroplanes and surface vessels in the South Pacific area appear to have declined "during the past fortnight." The highly mobile forces of modern war are under no compulsion to "stay put"; their movement from one point of concentration to another does not lessen danger, and Mr. Stimson finds that "the strong possibility of a Japanese offensive still remains." He states that "General Mac Arthur is being sent all possible reinforcements, particularly aircraft." At the same time, Washington announces that regular transatlantic mass flights of fighter aeroplanes are being made from America to the Europe-Africa war zone. These mass flights are part of the global strategy of "smite Hitler first." Within the framework of that strategy, Washington will do its best to support Mac* Arthur, also to raid Nauru and the Gilberts, and to hit Japan wherever Japan is not ready.

Seasonal flights of migratory birds over great distances, sometimes over half the globe, have always been one of the world's wonders. In deference to this marvel of Nature, as exhibited in the global strategy of the godwit, the New Zealand Government has shown some tendency towafds disarmament so far as this voyager from Siberia is concerned—a tendency that has not yet crystallised in a May armistice for non-migratory native birds like the grey duck. But while the first of May guns are banging in New Zealand, Hussia prepares for a greater May Day explosion somewhere on her long war front, and, far to the south of her, the threatened Levant offensive of the Allies comes again into the picture per medium of Cyprus manoeuvres, and counter-measures of Germans and Bulgarians in Greece and the Balkans. Perhaps some of those American fighters which now, imitating the migratory birds, are winging their way in mass' flights across the Atlantic Ocean, are destined for Cyprus and the Levant and ultimately for the Balkans, to aid the Red Army in the great European continental task of rolling up the Axis front from east to west. In the beating of. material wings and in the engine-roar across the Atlantic can be heard the music of a new Mediterranean drama with Cyprus in the island role that might have been played—and even yet may be played—by Crete.

The birds of war have been carrying out another and a different mission between Britain and the Baltic Sea. Mine-dropping as well as bombdropping aeroplanes range the German Baltic coast and coastal waters, where German submarines go through their preliminary paces, where their crews are trained, and where Germany carries out various amphibious operations hostile to Russia. The intensified activity of the R.A.F. in mine-dropping in the Baltic may be associated with recent reports of a new German offensive against Leningrad. It is quite likely that unreliability of her Finnish partner may incite Germany to a northern offensive as a curtain-raiser to her general eastern offensive. No doubt Hitler feels the need of doing something strenuous to keep Finland in line and to awe Sweden. It is remarkable, too, that Hitler, in his retirement from the Caucasus, maintained the Kerch Straits Kuban bridgehead. Has- he sufficient resources to provide for all Russian contingencies not only at the extremes of the Russian front but in between, and at the same time to implement a tremendous Mediterranean programme dictated to him by the Allies' threat from Africa, Syria, and Cyprus? That is the vital issue raised by the war of resources. That the Allies are superior in resources has long been clear. That they are superior in available resources I —available in Europe—was not so clear. But the long war of transport inclines in their favour, and the massed.flights to the war zone tip the scales.