"Now I come to February 8, which was the date our forces entered Ben-ghazi—a brilliant exploit which brought a valuable gain. But with the supreme effort entailed by that advance, the armoured troops who had so large a shore in it had to rest and refit.
"There was no prospect of prolonging the advance with those armoured vehicles beyond the' point reached at Benghazi. and ary prolonged advance by these formations to Tripoli was out of the question "The previous plan had been to stop after the capture of Tobruk and meet the western flank there, but so brilliant had been the success, and so great the disorganization of the enemy, that it was rightly decided to make rapidly the further brilliant advance, "Another consideration was that the harbour at Benghazi was then unusable, and its preparation must have taken some time, Meanwhile, any further advance would have had to be based on the small harbour at Tobruk, which, though good, is small, while our main bose would of course have been that in the Delta, "On February 8 there reached the British Government a note from the Greek Government confirming the Getermination of the Greek Government to resist German aggression. It asked us to say what help we could give, and conditions on which we could give it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.