THE OTAGO DAILY NEWS Thursday, January 29, 1942. THE LIBYAN CAMPAIGN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24827, 29 January 1942, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY NEWS Thursday, January 29, 1942. THE LIBYAN CAMPAIGN

The most recent information respecting the military operations in Cyrenaica is disappointing and rather baffling. For the second time the Army of the Nile has been pushed back over territory which it had captured at heavy cost. For the second time it has been surprised by the evidence of the resilience of an enemy who was said to have lost two-thirds.of his effective strength, and from whom important captures of munitions and stores had been made. On this occasion, apparently, it has yielded stores to this enemy after it had been assumed that he had been forced into the adoption of a purely defensive role. General von Rommel, the German com-mander-in-chief, has proved himself to be an able, resourceful, and audacious leader. Mr Churchill has not hesitated to pay him a high tribute. He has described him as a great general. It has certainly been a remarkable achievement on General Rommel's part to recover the initiative which he had seemed to have irretrievably lost. It is to be feared that the heavy losses which he had sustained in "this strange, sombre battle of the desert" had led to his being held too cheaply. Otherwise, even though, under cover of the repeated air attacks on Malta, considerable reinforcements may have reached him, it would be difficult to account for his having been able, as apparently he has been, to seize British ammunition dumps and supplies, and thus to eke out his own depleted stocks. Nor does it afford us a great deal of consolation to be told by the military correspondent of The Times that, in regard to the latest operations, "unfortunately, we were not ready to get our blow in first." For it is to be regretted that that is a repetition of a story which we have, been told more frequently than we have liked. No doubt it is perfectly true that actual territory does not count for much in the desert country of North, Africa as long as the enemy's attempt to invade Egypt is successfully resisted. Yet it is disconcerting that a campaign which had for the second time gone so well for the Army of the Nile should have in part to be fought over again and that Imperial forces in substantial numbers should have to be retained in Libya at a time when it might have been hoped that some of them could be transferred to other battle fronts. Viewed as a whole, however, the campaign is considered by Mr Churchill to have been "a highly profitable transaction." While we may believe that it might, and indeed should, have been more profitable than it has so far turned out to be, we may readily accept the Prime Minister's. judgment that the present situation in the Nile Valley is incomparably easier than it ever was since "the capitulation of France and the intervention ■of Italy. Our faith, also, in the successful outcome of the desert warfare need not be in the slightest degree shaken by the' occurrence of the disagreeable, setback which we have now suffered. Fluctuations in the fortunes of war there always will be. Our resources have, as Mr Churchill admits, been severely strained, and the margins in our favour have sometimes been slender, but the Empire will derive encouragement from the confidence he expresses when he says that "it looks more than it ever did before as if we are going to win."

AUSTRALIA AT WAR The complaint which the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Curtin, has levelled at the British Broadcasting Corporation that it is "too garrulous " is one which, with no ill will towards him, might also be laid at his own door. Since the outbreak of war with Japan he has acted resolutely as spokesman for Australia—and, in default of any guidance from Wellington, as that for New Zealand also —in impressing upon the Anglo-American Allies the special position of menace in which the two southern dominions have been placed through the lightning Japanese successes in northwestern Pacific waters. Apart altogether from the question of responsibility for the situation in which Australia and New Zealand find themselves —and that is a responsibility which cannot be glibly foisted upon the British Government —it is patently necessary that the Allied war strategy shall take adequate account of the peril of these dominions. The trained men of their fighting services are dispersed to a large extent in distant war zones, and the naval and air strength at their command does not guarantee their integrity. In pointing out these facts to the Governments of Great Britain and the United States, Mr Curtin has acted rightly. When lands which have given undivided and material support in a common cause are themselves threatened, it would be possible to be too scrupulous as to the niceties governing their approach to their allies, and Mr Curtin's bluntness has had much to recommend it. His outspokenness has helped to assure that all which can be done to assist the dominions in the greatest crisis they have had to face will be done, and that they will have representation at the war councils of the Allies. Yet by his very ardent advocacy of the Australian case, Mr Curtin has inevitably called attention to the Commonwealth's own war organisation. This is not on a basis comparable with that of Great Britain and the United States. It is not possible

for the Australian Prime Minister to suggest that his country is itself prepared for total war while labour troubles, similar to those that have become a shame to New Zealand, are being experienced; and while, for political reasons, his Government ignores the need for complete conscription of man-power. The enemy has no compunction about conscripting all resources for war; nor have the two Allied Powers to whom Mr Curtin looks for aid. His announcement that all non-essen-tial industries in Australia will be closed -down, to enable concentration on essential production, indicates that, with the Commonwealth's shores threatened, a spirit of realism has at last penetrated the Government's consciousness. It is a drastic step that is being taken, but no more drastic than the situation of the Commonwealth requires. The people of the great democracies, who have harkened sympathetically, but not entirely without questionings, to Australia's demands will welcome this earnest that the Commonwealth is measuring up to the standard of efficiency in the prosecution of the war that she expects from her allies.