STOP PRESS NEWS

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21304, 24 December 1940, Page 4

STOP PRESS NEWS

FIGHT FOR BARDIA SWARMS OF REINFORCEMENTS nr **•- LONDON, Dec. 23 The besieged Italian garrison at Bard>a still holds out, but British reinforcements are swarming into Libya for the next big battle, says the Times’ correspondent at Solium. An unending procession of British traffic, marked by a long line of dust, is pouring up Hell Are Pass into Libya. There are guns, tanks, troop-carriers, English, New Zealanders, Australians, Indians and Free French in the procession. The line of reinforcements is said to reach back to the Nile, nearly 400 miles oast. After picking their way from rock to rock the British patrols are inside the outer ring of Bardia's defences. They strike in the darkness with a sudden rattle of Bren gunfire, then dart back to strike at another place. Echoing 'dully through the noise of the bombing of small arms is the steady rumble of British artillery. All this is window-dressing for what is coming. The importance which Italy attaches to holding Bardia is betrayed in a Rome broadcast that the defence of Bardia is not only the defence of Libya but the defence of Fascism. Signor Ansaldo, editor of the Telegrafo, broadcasting to the Italian troops, denied German propaganda that the African campaign is a secondrate affair. Italy has always regarded the Med-terranean as one of the main theatres of war, equal to the north in imforlance. He said that Britain has raised its forces in Egypt to 420,000 men and huge masses of war material. Everything depends on which side has the more abundant material and assured supplies.