NEW SITUATION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 3 December 1940, Page 5

NEW SITUATION

IN THE MEDITERRANEAN RESULT OF ITALIAN NAVAL BLUNDER BRITISH POSITION IMPROVED [U P A.-By Electric Telegraph-CoDyrlght] LONDON, 2nd December. According to the naval correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian,” it is no longer possible for the Italians to maintain their lines of communication with their overseas armies. They have provided, he says, the most ludicrous example of political panic overpowering the reasoned thought of naval experts. By attempting to withdraw the main fleet from Taranto to Cagliari, resulting in the battle of Sardinia, the naval command committed a major blunder. British naval experts have thus been provided with the opportunity of summing up the new situation in the Mediterranean. Their conclusions are that Italy’s strategic dispositions have been broken and the basis of Mussolini’s defensive plans both in Albania and Libya has been endangered. The naval correspondent of “The Times” especially calls attention to the improvement of the British strategical dispositions as the result of the possession of Greek harbours, some of which are among the best in the world, as compared with the situation when the fleet was based on Alexandria, which is some 800 miles from the vital centres of Italy’s communications. “The Times’s” expert also points out that Suda Bay affords an excellent harbour at Crete and is 400 miles nearer than Alexandria to the localities in which naval operations against Italy can most effectively be carried on. Thus a 500-mile radius from Suda Bay, he claims, takes in Brindisi, Taranto, Messina, and Syracuse, while the Libyan ports, except Tripoli, are only 250 miles from Crete. ITALIAN “VICTORY” CLAIM CENTURY-OLD PARALLEL [British Official Wireless] RUGBY, Ist December. According to the German radio Deutschlandsender, the newspapers in Rome claim a success for the Italian Navy in the recent naval engagement near Sardinia. If the Italians really regard as a “victory” their hurried run to safety away from what on paper | was an inferior force, it would seem that the prestige of the British Navy is as high to-day as it was more than 100 years ago when, in Pitt’s famous words, it enabled England “to save herself by her exertions and Europe by her example.” A curious similarity between the present Italian claims and those made by the French and Spanish admirals after an engagement with a small British force on 12th July, 1801, may be noted. On that day a French and Spanish' squadron of six ships set out from Algeciras for Cadiz. They were at once followed by a British admiral with five ships, which made contact and began a running action in the late hours of the night. As a result of this engagement three! of the enemy squadron were lost and j 2500 men killed, wounded or taken j prisoners, insignificant damage being inflicted on the British. The French and Spanish admirals, however, claimed a “victory” solely on the ground that their remaining three ships were able to sail fast enough to reach the protection of Cadiz harbour. BLOWS FOR PUBLIC ITALIAN ADMISSIONS LONDON, Ist December. A talk on the Rome radio last night on what was called the “salient facts of these last few weeks of naval history” began with the admission, “We don’t in the least enjoy talking about the bombing of Taranto, for it is one of the stern vicissitudes of our victorious anti-British war.” Listeners to the Rome radio were told that the British Mediterranean Fleet received its first irreparable blow on 18th November, and that blow, according to the Rome radio, was not less staggering than Signor Mussolini’s speech in which he admitted that British naval planes had hit three warships at Taranto and so badly damaged one of them that it would take a long time to repair. The other “blows” delivered by Signor Mussolini were statements that the Greek mountains were not suitable for a blitzkrieg, and that Herr Hitler had given him permission to join in the bombing of British women and children. Finally, on 18th November, Signor Mussolini appealed to Fascists to free their country from what he called “a kind of pacifism which must be closely watched and fought.”