Message from Libya

At last the real issue is clear. For years the incompetence of generals, of air marshals, of the War Office mind has found refuge behind the lame excuse of inadequate equipment. . . . Now they have had their chance. . . . They had mastery of the air, of the sea, and superiority of numbers at the decisive moments. And they lost.

Thus last week did London's leftist weekly Tribune react to the news that the British Imperial Army was retreating in Libya. To the worried British Government, this blast had a special significance because the Tribune's editor-director is the Government's new chief critic, Sir Stafford Cripps. The generals, the air marshals and the War Office had not yet lost all--the Army stood early this week on "a line that can be defended" before Tobruk--but ordinary Britons were just beginning to learn how long and how seriously matters had been amiss in Libya.

Now It Can Be Told. The roots of disaster went back to last November, when the drive against General (now Marshal) Erwin Rommel's sand-bitten Afrika Korps and his allied Italians had barely started. Nazi tanks were bigger and outgunned the best British tanks three-to-one; the German field-repair and supply services were infinitely better.

Rommel met offensive with counteroffensive. Reckless British tank tactics temporarily overcame the Nazis' technical advantages--but at an appalling cost. Britain's field commander, Lieut. General Sir Alan Cunningham, had apparently decided on retreat. Gritty General Sir Claude Auchinleck removed Cunningham, gave the field command to 44-year-old Major General Neil Methuen Ritchie. Then Auchinleck issued an order: "There is only one order--attack and pursue! All out, everyone!"

All out it was--but at the end of their long drive through Cyrenaica, the British were exhausted; their forward lines were paper thin.

Toward Suez. By this week resurgent Rommel had driven to within 130 miles of Salum. Once again he menaced Suez. One reason for his offensive success was clear: the British had greatly overestimated his earlier losses, had then underestimated his powers of recovery and reinforcement. Depleted British Naval forces in the Mediterranean, despite desperate efforts, had not halted German-Italian convoys. Rommel, at the end of his retreat last month, still had African airdromes to command a narrow air lane across the Mediterranean. Air reinforcements had certainly reached him.

Imperial Aussies, Indians, South Africans and Britons emplaced themselves before oft-captured, oft-recaptured Tobruk. But even if they held that line, they had, by their own Prime Minister's definition, been defeated in Libya. His definition of victory: utter destruction of the Afrika Korps.

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