A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HE Libya battle may have produced more
visible results by the time these lines are read than it has at the moment they are being written. After the general satisfaction at the effects of the first clash, a public keyed-up perhaps a little excessively by the publication of the Prime Minister's message beginning " I have it in command from the King," and likening the coming struggle in its significance to Blenheim and Waterloo, relapsed first into perplexity and then into a certain secret uneasiness as the gigantic tank-battle swayed to and fro, with heavy losses on both sides but no decision, and the expected junction between the troops rallying out from Tobruk and the forces engaged at El Adhem did not materialise. In actual fact, as regards the tanks there was no good basis for well-grounded expectation at all. There have of course been tank-clashes on a greater scale on the Eastern Front for months, but we have not heard many details about them, and in any case the wedges or the frontal attacks there produced a different kind of battle from the one the trapped Rommel has been fighting from attacks on two or three different sides. Our own tanks have never in history undergdne an experience like their ordeal in Libya today and we have not realised the power of mobility to delay a final decision. But the average man, who recognises himself unqualified to criticise operations so novel, has faith in three things, the power of the Navy to prevent reinforcements from reaching the Germans by sea ; the power of the air-force to turn the scale if the issue should be undecided on the ground ; and the generalship of Sir Claude Auchinleck and Sir Alan Cunningham. Hopes have been raised high and the consequences of success depicted so plainly that impatience for early results is inevitable. Mr. Churchill's suggestion that " as in a sea-battle all may be settled one way or the other in the course of perhaps two hours " set us all waiting for the next news-bulletin. But there is no reason at all for doubting that patience will in due time be fully rewarded.
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