ALLIED POLICY CRITICISED

Evening Star, Issue 24933, 3 August 1943, Page 3

ALLIED POLICY CRITICISED

" ENEMIES ACT WHILE WE CHATTER " LONDON, August 2. Tlie ' Daily Mail,' in an editorial, says: " Tlio British people will become most impatient, to say no more, if the next few days do not bring marked developments in the Italian situation." After detailing points in Mr Churchill's and President Roosevelt's speeches and General Eisenhower's offer to Italy, the ' Daily Mail ' continues: "While'we hav6 been chattering our enemies have been acting—and let us not forget that the Italians aro still our enemies as well as the Germans. In our anxiety to give a breathing space to the Italians the situation has deteriorated to our disadvantage. The Allies have permitted the Germans to recover by allowing Marshal Badoglio to temporise. Ho is trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. The bombing of Rome had immediate results. If last week we had sent heavy attacks against military targets up and down the peninsula the cries for peace might by now have been translated into unconditional surrender. If Italy gets away with it some of the small Axis States might be encouraged to go on fighting until the time came for them, too, to appeal to the soft-hearted democracies."

Discussing Allied plans for the rule of occupied lands, the Washington correspondent of the ' New York Times ' says: "It is certain that the official Allied attitude towards Japan and Germany will be,far more severe than towards Italy, because (1) they are more powerful and dangerous, and (2) the Allied leaders do not feel the same confidence in the pacific character of the Japanese and German peoples as they do in the Italians. Officials point out that Sicily is the first working model showing what is in store for occupied territories. They explain that occupied territories will be placed under military rule, which is designed to be rigidly non-political. This rule, however, will soon be replaced by an Allied civil administration which, according to present plans, will govern enemy countries through the expected long armistice period, which in Europe may last until Japan's defeat."