Evening star., 1941-04-20
Victory in Africa, Not Greece,
Held Vital to British and Turks
Alexandra Keystone Assuring Aid to Ankoro
Eliot Says; Greek Campaign in Critical Phase

with fresh troops arriving in Egypt
from East Africa, and elsewhere,
it is quite possible that the Ger
mans. like the Italians before them,
may learn the folly of attempting
large-scale overseas operations with
out assuring themselves of the COM
mand of the sea.
Other Moves to Follow Iraq.
The strong measures taken by the
British government to assure the
tranquility of Iraq, suggests not
only determination not to allow any
axis infiltration in this area, but also
to assure a fresh line of communi-
cation with Turkey by way of the
Persian Gulf and the Instanbul-
Baghdad Railway.
1t suggests that the growing Brit
ish anxiety as to Turkeys position
is to be bolstered by military meas
ures designed to reassure the Turks;
of which the reinforcement of the
British power in Iraq will surely not
be the last.
Others which Immediately sug-
gest themselves are the occupation
of the Dodecanese Islands and the
bringing of Syria, by force or other
wise, into the British or Free
French" orbit.
But perhaps nothing could be so
reassuring to the Turks as VIC
tory in North Africa, a conclusive
demonstration of axis inability to
extend aerial lines of communica-
ton across the Mediterranean Sea
of sufficient capacity to maintain
an African expeditionary force of
any consequence.
This would mean the affirmation
once and for all of the power of the
British to maintain their fleet at
Alexandria. The Turks know well
that this is the keystone of Britain's
strategical arch in the Far East,
and it is undoubtedly true that the
disquiet and hesitation in Ankara
is due far more to the seeming peril
to Suez offered by the German ad-
vance to Salum, than to the Ger
man victories in the Balkans, which
Turkish military opinion had al
ready discounted we'll in advance.
Turkeys Position.
There may be tendency to re-
proach Turkey for sitting idly by
while Yugoslavia was overrun and
Greece invaded, but on the hard
military facts of the situation
Turkey was in no position to strike
unless the Germans had sustained
severe initial reverses. Turkey lacks
the mechanical equipment and the
air power which is indispensable to
a modern offensive.
Had there been time, well in ad-
vance, time and good will and de-
termination to form a hard and fast
defensive alliance among Yugo-
slavia, Greece and Turkey, with
British backing, and to implement
this alliance with the necessary
staff conversations, something might
have been done Bulgaria could
probably have been held in line and
the Germans compelled to fight in
italy on the Danube. Certainly
the Italian adventure in Albania
could have been liquidated.
An entirely different military sit
uation would then have confronted
the German high command. But
there was no coordination, there !
was no alliance. The Germans were
allowed, without fighting, to occupy
the invaluable Bulgarian bases, to re-
inforce the Italians in Albania with
the Tyrolean Mountain divisions
which were all that stood between
the Italian armies and debacle at
the hands of the Yugoslavs.
In a word, the Germans were al
lowed to keep the timing of the local
situation we'll in hand, though that
timing was dislocated to some ex-
tent at the last moment by a Yugo-
slav resistance which the Germans
had hardly expected and had not
fully prepared against.
Turkeys Future.
What Turkeys course will now be,
only the future can tell. She seems
certain to be faced with the familiar
sequence of German demands: First
a non-aggression treaty, next eco
nomic concessions, next demands for
- - 4npA 5.