It says that the situation in the area surrounding the RAF. station at Habbaniyah is much easier.
"Our night patrols found the enemy positions on the edge of the escarpment above Habbaniyah wnoccupied. The plateau due south of she cantonment is reported clear of rebel"
"The: communique goes on to give an account of how the post, on the pipe-line \was reoccupied. "One of Our reconnaissance aircraft few over post andthe insurgents, who were occupying the post on the pipe-me, signified that they wished to surrender by waving white flags Subsequently, the post was occupied our ground troops."
An earlier communique said that the situation at Basrah was still quiet, thus contradicting an Iraqi tween her fleet and ours and thus admitted us to an equal share in that. control, "The significant feature to us of this century-old condition has been that @ country speaking our language, possessing our traditions of individual and legal freedom and inhabited population from'which considerably more than 0 per cent, of our own population are descended has been Accepted by us as the dominant factor in ocean defence upon which our safety and mode of life depend, During that century, we have accommodated our whole method of life to that situation, We have main. tained no large standing armies, We have built populous cities upon our sea coast which are easily vulnerable fo attack from the Atlantic Ocean. We have, in short, adopted a: mode of national life which is dependent upon. continuance of a sea-power of hension, up I which we ourselves feel in no appre~
"Today, that situation is gravel threatened, 'The British Isles, which have been a fortress against, any Gespotie approach to our shores through the northern reaches of the Atlantic are' threatened both attacks from the air and blockade from the seo, If thelt Government should fall, other from starvation or from attack, the British Fleet, it it survived at all, would have ud adequate base for' its continued opera statement! that a very heavy Dattle was going on there—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.