WHY DID IT HAPPEN?
pFi.is may be worse news to come from the Middle East I. yet. In any case what has come already is bad enough. We have sustained a defeat of the first magnitude in Libya. We have lost territory, we have lost material, we have lost some 25,000 prisoners, apart from killed and wounded. And we have lost heavily in prestige, a misfortune which brings repercussions of vary- ing degree, all of them bad, at Ankara, at Madrid, at Moscow, at Vichy. What is worse is that, despite the tactical genius of Rommel, it is clear that the debikle ought never to have taken place. The reasons why it did take place are still in some respects obscure, but the war correspondents have cast some light on the subject, and the House of Commons showed un- mistakably on Tuesday that it will not rest till the matter has been probed to its lowest depths. For the disasters in the Far East there may have been some excuse. Till France fell there was no question of Japan acquiring Indo-China ; not till some time later did a concerted attack from there on Malaya seem probable ; when it did material essential for the defence of the peninsula had been earmarked for other theatres, Libya con- spicuous among them. In Libya itself no conditions of that kind prevailed. Fighting had been going on there for two years and more, and that a new offensive by one side or the other was imminent was obvious to everyone. There could be no excuse for being unprepared. • Nor, to all appearance, were General Auchinleck and General Ritchie unprepared. On the contrary, there is every reason to think they were ready to take the offensive themselves if they had deemed it best. As it was, the first phases of the battle by no means went in Rommel's favour. His assault broke itself against the Gazala line, and the fortress of Bir Hakeim was held with indomitable courage by the Free French for fifteen days till a concentrated attack by dive-bombers made it finally untenable. Meanwhile two gaps were made in the Gazala line, then the two were joined up and the bulge of enemy troops inside them, after being held for ten days, was no longer held, and finally, as climax, came the still unexplained disaster of the 13th, about which General Auchinleck says surprisingly little in the despatch which Mr. Attlee read to the House of Commons on uesday. That was the turning-point. If things had not gone wrong en we should be in possession of Tobruk today, and Rommel might be moving west instead of already battering at the Egyptian frontier. All we know is that our tanks ran into an ambush here they were raked by the fire of anti-tank guns, with a resultant loss so heavy that from that moment the Eighth Army as a beaten force. What no one has yet explained, and what arliament must discover if it can, is what was deficient in our econnaissance that the net skilfully spread by Rommel should are snared so rich a booty. Was bad visibility a decisive or only contributory factor?
There is a good deal more that needs explaining equally. That ommel can secure reinforcements far more easily than General tchie, whose supplies must make the 14,000-mile voyage round e Cape, is common knowledge, but our situation in the Mediter- nean has been steadily deteriorating. We are less and less able to terfere with the passage of enemy convoys. We have been less d less able to get our own convoys safe to Malta or Tobruk. One eason, no doubt, is that the mass air-raids on Malta have pre- uded us from using that island any longer as an air-base. Has t situation not been accepted too easily? Were medium and vy bombers, which could reach North Africa by air, better ployed in raiding Germany from Britain than they would have n in raiding Sicilian air-fields from Gazala? These are estions that urgently need answer, for there is a serious danger that it may no longer be possible to count on getting supplies to Malta with the necessary regularity. Long, moreover, though the journey for our supply-ships to the Red Sea is, it is no longer for cargoes of the right material than of the wrong. And one of the fatal handicaps to our troops in Libya is that they are sent light tanks instead, of heavy, armed with two-pounder guns instead of six-pounder, anti-tank-guns inferior to the Germans', and no dive-bombers at all. The value of these latter is disputed, but the Air Ministry evidently attaches importance to them, for it lodged orders—still unfulfilled—for dive-bombers in July 1940, close on two years ago. Explanations of the useless- ness of these machines, moreover, become a little tedious in face of the reports of the decisive effect they have had in enemy hands in Malaya or Crete or at Bir Hakeim. It is the Whitehall end of the dive-bomber and 6-pounder problem that needs probing.
Finally there is the culminating .blow at Tobruk. Was the decision to attempt to hold the port taken suddenly? Had the fortress been put in what was believed to be a proper state of defence? Was Rommel possessed of artillery of an unsuspected calibre? Or was it that here, as earlier in the battle, his moves were considerably swifter than our ripostes? One of the most exhaustive and convincing despatches from the spot concludes with the verdict that we were not outfought, not seriously out- gunned, not robbed of our superiority in the air, but undis- guisedly out-generalled, being reduced to relinquishing the initiative everywhere to Rommel and perpetually adopting defensive postures when it was just too late. This is a drastic judgement, and it can only be recorded, not endorsed. But it must be searchingly examined, and quickly. It is unfortunate that the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff are both in the United States, for at this moment they are urgently wanted here. It is vitally important to decide at once whether new commanders are needed on what was the Libyan, and is now only the Egyptian, front. General Ritchie showed considerable capacity not only before the recent battles but during them. General Auchinleck has endorsed his judgement regarding the abandon- ment of Bir Hakeim, and by general consent his extrication of the South African and 5oth Divisions from the Gazala front where they were on the point of being cut off was a highly skilful piece of work. For all that he must be given full credit. But the fact remains that he is back at Sollum, instead of at Benghazi, with something like two of his divisions taken prisoner at Tobruk. There can be no escape from an investigation which must be swift as well as searching.
It remains to read aright the lessons that defeat—the last of a sombre succession of such defeats—inculcates. Public opinion is perplexed and angry, naturally perplexed and rightly angry. Resolution is hardened, not weakened, but the demand that responsibility be laid where it should. be is insistent. Any attempt at excuse or exoneration would have disastrous effects on the Government politically. The country, hardened in resolve by its reverses, is in no mood for that. It will not be unreasonable. It recognises that Mr. Churchill had good grounds (the Libyan situation was not one of them) for his visit to America, and that his discussions with President Roosevelt must not be curtailed unduly. Decisions, indeed, may be taken in Washington that will help to restore the situation in North Africa. But the Prime Minister must make no mistake about what is expected of him on his return. The numerous questions which the Libyan defeat provokes must be answered without evasion or prevarication and with no suspicion of an attempt to divert blame from any soldier or politician or administrator who may be shown to merit it.
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