G RAVE as the difficulties which face the Fifth Army a
Salerno are, the latest messages received as we go to press encourage
NEWS OF THE WEEK
the belief that the position will be held till the flow of reinforce- ments and the approach of the Eighth Army from the south turn an indomitable defence into victory. Command of the sea enables the Navy to give invaluable help to the land forces, and though there is as yet no adequate fighter-cover, that position improves almost hourly as the Eighth Army secures new airfields nearer and nearer to the Salerno front ; the capture of Foggia on the east coast would revolutionise the whole situation. The fact, moreover, that the Germans, Who are receiving reinforcements little if at all inferior to our own, are throwing in everything they have in the hope of driving the Fifth Army into the sea means that their defeat, if it comes, will put the whole of Southern Italy in our hands and make at any rate the first stages of the advance northwards rela- tively easy. At the same time, it is impossible to resist the con- clusion that the Germans have a faculty for improvisation and speed off the mark which the Allies rarely equal. That does not apply to the Italian campaign only, or to the failure to put Mussolini at once in safe Allied keeping. Action in the Dodecanese or the Balkans might reasonably have been hoped for before this. Ever since the fall of Sicily news of the situation and activities of the Seventh Army has been lacking, and all that was known, or assumed, of the Ninth and Tenth was that they were somewhere in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. It is not believed that shipping to move them is wanting. There are unofficial rumours that the Ninth Army has now actually embarked, and even that one or two islands in the Aegean have been seized. But meanwhile time has been given for the Germans, though numerically inferior, to overpower the Italians and establish possession of the more important islands like Crete and Rhodes. In Yugoslavia and Greece the guerillas are in a position to lend substantial help to any Allied force. The opportunity is crying out to be seized.
