DODECANESE SETBACK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 275, 20 November 1943, Page 5

DODECANESE SETBACK

PRESS SHARPLY CRITICAL

Recd. 6 p.m. London, Nov. 18. “The time has come when the fullest possible report should be made of our incursion into the Dodecanese.” says the Daily Mail in a leader commenting on the fall of Leros. “We seem to have captured islands in the Dodecanese with no certainty of holding them. It would have been better never to have set out on the enterprise. “Failure at this juncture is bound to have an unfavourable effect upon neutral, Axis and satellite opinion. It would appear that, as in the case of Italy, the speed and force ot German counter-measures were not anticipated, otherwise after' all our hard-won experiences we would surely never again have attempted to hold islands so situated against overmastering air power.” “The surrender of Leros can hardly fail to suggest either that we did not plan on a sufficiently generous scale or that we planned beyond the means of the moment,” says The Times in an editorial. “It would be wholly unjust to seek to fix responsiblities upon the commanders on the spot for ihe reverses in the Aegean or the delays in Italy. General Alexander brilliantly demonstrated what he can do witn full material support. On the contrary the impression left by these events Is that Allied planning on the highest scale has failed to exploit our Mediterranean strategy, initiated and consistently sustained by Mr. Churchill at a moment when it promised tne highest yield.” The Daily Express’ military correspondent, Morley Richards, says: “These questions are being asked—if we knew we could not hold the islands without fighter cover why did we not evacuate the garrisons? Why go there in the first place and sacrifice several thousand men for no purpose?” Richards says he believed landings on islands at the rear of Rhodes might have been the first step toward a major campaign into the Balkans. If that was so, then the campaign must for some reasons have been postponed.