NEWS OF THE WEEK
HAT General Rommel has launched an offensive in Libya is certain. Whether he has in view distant or only local objectives not yet certain. Till that is cleared up it will be wise to assume former. Coinciding as the move on Bir Hakeim does with the wing intensity of the fighting in the Kharkov sector and the ulsion of the Russians from the. Kerch peninsula—an obvious eliminary to a German move on the Caucasus—there is some oration to see in it an attempt to initiate the immense and familiar cers movement in which an attack on the Caucasus from the kraine front would synchronise with an attack on Egypt and the z Canal by Rommel and conceivably an attack on India by the panese. But to associate the offensive which began on Tuesday h this vast conception would be altogether premature. In any Marshal Timoshenko, General Auchinleck and General Wavell have a good deal to say about the execution of such a plan. eanwhile the immediate resistance to Rommel's drive is in the pable hands of General Ritchie and his Eighth Army. It is un- ately the case that the concentrated air-raids on Malta have bled many enemy convoys to get through to Libya without inter- nee by British bombers based on the island. Otherwise el's task would be harder than it is.
