WAR NEWS IN BRIEF

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 July 1941, Page 2

WAR NEWS IN BRIEF

MONTENEGRO’S KING. LONDON, July 12. The Berlin radio states that Montenegro has proclaimed itself a monarchy. It has asked the King of Italy to appoint a prince as king. MORE COAL NEEDED. RUGBY, July 13. The Prime Minister sent a special message to coal-miners, through Admiral Sir Edward Evans, who addressed the miners at Coalville, Leicestershire, to-day. “An immediate increase in coal production,” said Mr. Churchill, “is of vital importance to the armed forces and the industries supplying them with weapons. Admiral Evans said: “We are m for harder fighting than we have ever seen in this war. It means sacrifice all round. Victory will very nearly depend on the coal output in the next four months.” —8.0.W. ITALY’S HEAVY LOSSES. -RUGBY, July ,13. Italy lost well over half a million effective soldiers during the campaign in the Mediterranean theatres of war to the end of June, 1941. Thus, when Hitler referred earlier in the year to die “slight misfortunes” of his Axis partner, he must have been interpreting such misfortunes in an extraordinarily relative sense. Authoritative figures show that in Libya, East Africa and Albania, white prisoners totalled 241,000’, while other casualties reached the figure of 135,000. Of the native forces, 09,000 were made prisoners of war in these three theatres of war, and 137,000 are included among other casualties. Of 132,000 native “other casualties” in East Africa, most were deserters. These figures are in all cases a close approximation, and it is fairly pointed out that most of the 25,000 white prisoners taken in the Albania operations were released when Germany invaded Greece. The total figure of 582,000 Italian casualties is not thereby considerably lessened. —8.0.W.