Axis Fidgets

Rumors of a United Nations thrust in Africa, before the peak heat comes, flew about in Rome last week like leaves in a skittish wind. Some said the offensive had already started with stepped-up R.A.F. activity over the Libyan deserts. Others reported that Anglo-American naval forces had concentrated “in the neighborhood of Tripoli.” No Axis nerves were soothed when the Giornale d’ltalia announced that “the Anglo Saxons have succeeded recently in transporting strong reinforcements to their Egyptian bases.”

Certain significant developments might have meant that all this smoke did mean a trace of fire. The Fascist War Office burst into feverish activity. Berlin report-ed “important conferences” between Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and General Ettore Bastico, Governor of Libya and Com-mander in Chief of Italian forces there.

Nazi reconnaissance planes discovered a flotilla of powerful British destroyers which may have been steaming toward the rumored naval concentration off Tripoli. Swarms of Heinkel & Junkers dive-bombers swooped down on the destroyers in midafternoon, sank the 1,935-ton Lively on their first attack, were driven off by British Beaufighters on their second, sank the 1,695-ton Kipling on a third go and so severely damaged her sister ship the Jackal that the British sank her next day. The signs of increasing Axis activity might simply be provoked by an Allied success in the war of nerves. Sir Stafford Cripps, British Lord Privy Seal, recently told his Bristol constituents: “The Germans are getting uneasy at the militant spirit of the British and American people in this matter of a second front.” The Italians, who know that some of the most militant Allied strategists propose to establish the second front on the Italian boot, are patently most uneasy.