WHAT LONDON IS THINKING POLITICS AND WAR ON PACIFIC FRONT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 147, 23 June 1945, Page 4

WHAT LONDON IS THINKING POLITICS AND WAR ON PACIFIC FRONT

Special to the Auckland Star by TREVOR SMITH

LONDON, June 19. THIS is the inside story of a recent T-'. international transformation,, an inside story of the Kremlin.

As President Truman's personal emissary, ailing Mr. Harry Hopkins, short-circuiting the Foreign Commissar, M. Molptov, went straight to Marshal Stalin. He told him that the U.S. administration wanted to play ball, but if the present drift between Russia and America continued, President Truman feared that he could not hold American public opinion. ,

Marshal Stalin did not attempt to disguise his realisation of the extent to which American opinion was drawing away from Russia, and that It was disturbing him. Hence, something like a magic wand seems to have been waved over the scene.

I wrote a fortnight ago that things were never as bad as they looked, but judging from the defeatists, alarmists and croakers in London and Washington who do not enjoy life unless they are despairing, you would have thought that the world was coming to an end.

Now where are we? This \s what the magic wand has done:—

Firstly, it has paved the way for an early Big Three meeting.

Secondly, it has broken the Polish deadlock, at least for the moment.

Thirdly, it has sorted things but at Trieste.

Fourthly, it has brought the Allies together in Berlin and Vienna as a start.

Fifthly, it nas brought tranquillity to the Aosta Valley (Italy), where French withdrawals will be announced to the world as normal troop movements. The Allied Military Government will take over.

Thus several potentially and violently explosive spots abroad have been deadened for a moment. Only Syria remains, and surely it is not beyond the wit of man to cope with General de Gaulle's megalomania. The Pacific Front As for the Pacific, these last few days have evidently seen the end of something pretty important in the Allied scheme of things. . The planners, the backroom boys whose calculations and conclusions so often are adopted without argument by the front.room boys who sign the chits, have decided that the Japanese now have virtually an iron ring around them.'. They are riot saying that this Pacific war will finish to-morrow or the next day, but they are very satisfied about events in Borneo, and the overall progress. Singapore and the Netherlands East Indies are on all the maps in front of them now. The Royal Navy's full part in the Pacific was decided: lprjg ago, but just what the R.A.F.. will do was settled only recently. The exact number of men and machines that will be. in the Pacific when the R.A.F. is in full strength cannot be disclosed, but the availability of shipping, the limitation of

bases, and such problems, render impossible the employing of a force comparable with that used in Europe.

You can get some idea, however, from the fact that the R.A.F.'s total strength will be reduced by onethird within a year, through demobilisation.

But the order has been issued that Pacific requirements remain paramount, that air mastery must be maintained over the battle areas to defeat the . Japanese as soon as possible, and tnat adequate fighter cover must be ensured.

Britain's biggest bombers* biggest bombs, faster and newest planes, and newest weapons, are all going and, in some cases, have already gone to the Pacific.

Last week saw the end of Britain's 115 months' old; Parliament, the longest since the one that was dissolved in 1679 and the fourth longest in British history. It was unique as the only Parliament haying sat under* three monarchs; also no previous Parliament had so many Prime Ministers or Governments.

There had been three Prime Ministers —Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Churchill—since 1935 and four separate Governments. Another record is that this Parliament passed over SQO Acts and that it voted £30,000,000,000 expenditure. This unforgettable decade, with its many days which will live on in the history ended }n a strange, sentimental, wistful atmosphere. It was a sad parting for the oldest member of the House of Commons, 87-year-old Mr. Will Thorne, ;whp has just become a Privy Councillor and who attended Parliament for the last time to shake hands with some of his old friends. Mr. Churchill, -too, was . obviously affected by the simple sincerity of many farewell handshakes. •

Not only was It ttie swan song for many of his Commoners, but for many, who have been. side by side, regardless of .rank or position, in the exciting, dangerous comradeship of fire-watchers and. Home Guard, protecting the 12-times-hit palace of Westminster. * * * * * *

Bombs or no bombs. No. 10, Downing Street, remained Mr. Churchill's residence throughout the war. But only now is Mr. Churchill's family moving back to No. 10. Puzzled? The answer is another wartime secret, and the Churchills' move involves a journey of only a few yards. Their wartime home was No. 1 Storeys Gate, a steel-shuttered, heavily-concreted "annexe" to NO; 10. Actually, No. 10 was shaken up by Mrs. Churchill's "personal" bomb, and had to be redecorated. Mrs. Churchill could not get a priority for the decorations, so they remained at Storeys Gate, from which Mr. Churchill's recent broadcasts were made. Downing Street remains closed by barricades and sentries to ensure that Mr. Churchill is quiet while working. H6 goes to No. 10 every morning, but Storeys Gate and No. 10 are connected by teleprinter and pneumatic tubes.

"Ike's" Honour "Ike" stormed the town and the town stormed "Ike." Not even Britain's own national heroes have been given a greater welcome than General Eisenhower aot when he was given the Freedom of the City of Londoni sword of honour, and the Order of Merit all in one day. This is unparalleled, but "Ike's" most vivid blush was when a London charwoman pressed a posy of roses into his hand'. He tried to hide them nervously behind his back. It was his only self-conscious moment. One secret illustrating "Ike's" greatness not yet revealed is that of his dismissal of several of his high officers for causing friction in British and American relations. This occurred not long after the General became Supreme Commander. He sent them back to America. . . Never was there a greater coordinated co'ODerator. never a greater statesman-soldier. Election Puzzles .

At last the general election makes main headlines, the people are roused, though not yet in any certain direction, and the one man you'd think would be dominating the scene just isn't. ;•■-.■: Mr. Churchill; by accident rather than by design. Is for the' moment somewhat in the background. The man making the loudest noise and getting the most unfavourable Press, is Lord Beaverbrook. He has alarmed even the Government's shrewdest political scientists, and dismayed newspapers Which are supporting the Government. He made Labour men dance with joy. Everybody, Tory and Opposition alike, accepts Mr. Bevin's acid comment that "Mr. Churchill's speech was. Beaverbrook at his worst." They blame Lord Beaverbrook for leading Mr. Churchill toward a stepping down from national leadership to party politics; they blame Lord Beaverbrook for inspiring Mr. Churchill to project Labour as a menacing Gestapo.

Serious Effect

There's no underrating the serious effect of this on the Government's chances. Even newspapers stoutly supporting the Government find the thought of a docile Labour leader like Major. Attlee as a Gestapo chief a bit thick. But the richest joke of all is to find Lord BeaVerbrook's own Sunday. Express thundering on almost every page for a return of the Conservatives while its humorous columnist, Nat Gubbins, with brilliant satire, annihilates, all thought of meek Labour men hurling the British populace to the Gestapo wolves. The gravest error as seen in Lord Beaverbrook's tactics by even the Government's best friends is the implication, that the vast mass of the populace here would for a single second vote for any party taking anything Gestapo-like seriously. The British public resents this and is outraged, and unless Mr. Churchill in his subsequent, appeals to the electors can undo the damage done by Lord Beaverbrook many of the public, out of sheer cussedhess rather than conviction, may vote Labour. I say this as a completely impartial onlooker. It is the situation as I see it now. * * * *

Hollywood has so often ballyhooed Lauren Bacall as "slinky sultry and torrid," that film critics' notices of "To Have and to Have Not" are dripping with the exotic glamour of this daughter of an Alsatian father and Rumanian mother. Lord Beaverbrook's film critic, Ernest Betts, who says Lauren's first public gesture after becoming Mrs. Humphrey Bogart is to steal the picture from her husband, writes: "She dreams through scene after scene in a cynical trance as if the world owed her a living and hadn't paid yet."