The press

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24366, 19 September 1944, Page 4

The press

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, H}44. ~~~

Quebec arid The Pacific It is possible to make too much of the fact that, although the war in Europe is not overlooked in the statement issued by Mr Churchill and Mr Roosevelt after their conference in Quebec, the reference to Japan is far weightier; and this comparison may be extended to the supplementary personal statements of the two leaders. Too much would be made of it, for example, if the inference were - drawn - that they had been preoccupied by the situation in the Far East and had devoted little time or attention -to other problems. That is improbable. But it is not an inference, it is a fact sustained by the text of the joint statement, that " the most " serious difficulty" encountered was that of finding "room and "opportunity" to throw against Japan the full power necessary and available to crush her. This can be read, and no doubt correctly, as a political statement. It is intended to answer the stupid or venomous lie that Britain intends to spare her effort in the Pacific. Mr Churchill's more express answer confirms the intention. But the statement is clearly not a political one only; it is also strategic, and the strategic problem is far more serious than the political occasion. While on four broad fronts, three of which are approaching integration, the war in Europe is at its climax of promise, it is difficult to interpret the Pacific situation in any but a correspondingly optimistic way. There is indeed much to encourage •long-range optimism. But a wholly! optimistic view disregards the grave turn for the worse in the"land campaign in China, the'absence''of any sign that this turn is being, or can be, swiftly arrested and reversed, and the consequences in ' other theatres of the war against Japan. The Japanese have fought their boldest and best sustained campaign in six years. They have broken some Chinese armies, driven back the front of the American air offensive, and come very close to establishing (if they have not established) a hard, continuous northsouth barrier front of their own for the first time. If they consolidate this victory, it is a telling one. If they pursue it with as much success, they may cripple China and, consequently, every Allied effort from the west that depends on Chinese resistance. But the situa-, tion is sufficiently serious, on a shorter view than that, to raise again some of the crucial questions of Pacific strategy and its direction. If what may be called the MacArthur plan is followed, Japan would be cracked, finally, between pincers applied from the Philippines and from the Chinese mau> land. His advance to the Philippines has been carried a stage furr ther in the last few days. But the prospects of the twin drive to the Chinese coast are by the change in the military situation on the mainland. If there is an alternative to this essentially military "two-directional assault" process, relatively slow and indirect, it appears in the essentially naval one of a direct drive against the Japanese islands, the forward bases for which, in the western Carolines and the Bonins, for example, have already engaged Admiral Nimitz's attention. The "most serious diffi"culty".has been to find "room " and opportunity" to strike at Japan with all possible force—and, it may be. suggested, to find them quickly. If Quebec has had to look for means of hastening the crisis of the war in the Pacific, then the formula in which the decision was reported conceals rather than reveals its significance. "To marshal all available forces against "Japan" is a formula that tells little or nothing. The object, or | change of object, and the timetable are all-important. •