JAPAN'S GAMBLE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13770, 13 October 1942, Page 7

JAPAN'S GAMBLE

WIDESPREAD STAKES "Japan has entered on a huge strategic gamble," writes Sir Reginald Bacon in the "Sunday Express." "She has spread her stakes from Wake Island in the east to the Andamans in the west; from her homeland in the north to New Guinea in the south, and has commenced a first-class military invasion of the borders of India. All this means a vast dispersal of force, the life of which, depends on the maintenance of thousands of miles of* sea communications. If this traffic is cut, the whole of these dispersed units will be paralysed for the want of munitions, and reinforcements will be denied them because of the loss of sea transport. That is why it is so important for the Allies to destroy the Japanese merchant navy. Herein lies Japan's gamble. For the moment she is safe, because of the Allies' want of sea power. It is foolish and wrong to talk of the Allied fleet as a fleet 'in being.' It is not yet in being, but on the day that it is ,it will at once be a fighting fleet operating on the flank of these vast Japanese sea routes. It is for this reason that we should have patience and a firm hope in the future of the outcome of our war in the Pacific. Every day we are becoming stronger at sea, every day that Japan loses a ship she cannot replace, she becomes weaker"