AMERICAN DISCONTENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1944, Page 3

AMERICAN DISCONTENT

NO TRIUMPHANT MARCH TO ROME. “SLOW PACE OF OPERATIONS.” (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, February 7. “The picture of the 156-day-old battle of Italy isn’t too encouraging, and it is time to say so,” writes the “New York Times” correspondent in Algiers. “The Germans are fighting back harder than ever at Cassino and have brought up new guns.

“Cassino may be said to hang by a thread, but it is a thread of steel and fire, requiring harder steel and hotter fire to snap it. “Similarly on the front below Rome there is nothing to justify hopes of a swift, smashing junction of the Allied forces and a triumphant march to Rome. In spite of the heavy Allied air and naval superiority the enemy is able to build up his forces in the An-zio-Nettuno wedge. At least four German divisions are now at this point, and more apparently are arriving. “The weather has turned gusty, slowing up the Allies’ vital reinforcement and supply process. This is significant, inasmuch as time is on the side of the defender, and every day lost increases the hazard to the Allies when the.major counter-attack finally comes.”

Hanson Baldwin, the military editor of the “New York Times,” says: “The operations in the Nettuno beach-head have revealed some defects in American tactical concepts; for example, a failure to land a sufficient mechanised mass to enable a daring, bold power drive into the German communication system.' The slow pace of the operations seems due to an over-cautious attitude by the Allied commanders.”