Evening star., 1942-01-10
Prospects in libyu

Gu Will GllC
struggles going on in the Far East
and in Russia, the campaign in
Libya may look like sideshow. That,
however, is not the viewpoint OF the
British high command. Large forces
of British troops and notable
amounts of heavy equipment, espe-
cially tanks, were concentrated in
Egypt for a major drive aimed at
the destruction of the Axis army in
Libya and the total expulsion OF
Axis forces from North Africa. Gov
ernment spokesmen in Parliament
have acknowledged that risks were
taken in the Far East by withholding
possible reinforcements from that
region in favor of other oojectives,
of which North Africa was deemed
one of the more important.
In the light of these admissions, 1t
is we'll to note what Britain's Libyan
offensive has achieved to date, and
what it's future prospects are. Ger
tainly much has been accomplished.
With the Axis retirement from
Agedabia, the whole of Eastern
Libya or Cyrenaica has been lost to
the Axis except for the isolated gar
risons at Solum and Halfaya Pass,
far back at the Egyptian border.
Those strongly entrenched garrisons,
blocking the main shore route from
Egypt to Libya, play much the same
nuisance role as did the British gar
rison at Tobruk last year, but their
prospects are less hopeful, since they
cannot be reinforced and provisioned
by sea. Those last nests of Axis
resistance, therefore, should soon be
eliminated. Furthermore, the Axis
already has lost heavily in men and
equipment that will be hard to re-
place in Africa.
The British imperials now stand
at precisely the point reached by
General Wavell year ago, and the
high command is faced with a SINH
lar choice. The dilemma is whether
to stand pat in Cyrenaica, which
effectively bars an attack on Egypt
so long as this bulwark is strongly
held. or whether to push on toward
the final Axis base at Tripoli. That
stronghold lies nearly 500 miles to
the westward, and the first 300 miles
would be especially hard going, be-
cause for much of the distance the
sand desert reaches the sea. Tanks
and artillery can move effectively
only along the coastal road built by
the Italians to bind their North
African empire together. 1t was
along this road that the Axis army
slipped quickly out of Agedabia and
made good its escape under cover of
a sandstorm that screened it from
view and kept the R. A. F. out of
the air.
The British have thus fallen short
of their main objec tive-the destruc-
ton of the Axis field army. Three
times the British thought they had
the Axis main force cut off and sur
rounded, but each time General
Rommel and his lieutenants evaded
or fought out of the closing Jaws of
the trap. Since inland f1anking
operations on large scale will be
difficult across the sand desert, it
looks as though the British would
have to pound their way westward
by frontal attacks against the Axis
rear guard until the enemy elects to
stand and fight major battle. Lon
don intimates that the Axis army is
being steadily reinforced by sea de-
spite the British naval blockade and
by transport planes flown in large
numbers from Sicily. With each
mile Of retreat, Axis supply lines are
shortened and resistance becomes
more compact. BY contrast, the
British supply lines grow longer and
a sustained offensive becomes more
of a problem. There are no good