When Is the Offensive?

No admiral is more acutely interested in the naval action which last week furrowed the blue Mediterranean than General Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck, Commander in Chief of the British forces in the Middle East. The chief naval objective of the British in the Mediterranean is the interruption of the Axis convoys that ferry from Italy to Libya, to supply the Axis forces in the Western Desert. In the state of Axis strength in Africa, General Auchinleck has a very special interest: he may want to test it one day soon.

By last week some guessers placed Italy's losses in the effort to nourish Axis strength in Libya at 500,000 tons of merchant shipping. Since August the British have sunk 108 Axis ships, damaging or destroying, they assert, half the ships engaged in convoy service.

Last week was the biggest week of all. For four ferocious nights British planes pounded Naples, chief port of debarkation, with occasional sideswipes at Sicily. Besides the convoy of twelve bagged by British Squadron Captain W. G. Agnew (TIME, Nov. 17) six more Axis supply vessels and a destroyer were sunk by submarines. The submarines also damaged two armed merchant cruisers, another destroyer, two more supply ships.

Nevertheless, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, Commander in Chief of the

Mediterranean Fleet, told the press that large numbers of Axis troops were still getting through to Libya--but with "wet shirts." Two or three or four weeks from now, when one side or the other takes the offensive on the fringe of the Libyan Desert, the importance of last week's sinkings may become clear.

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