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Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24566, 15 May 1945, Page 4

in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since 1914 and, going still further back into history, of Formosa, the Pescadores, and Korea. The Cairo Declaration has given Japan’s propagandists a powerful weapon. It may be doubted whether the assurance President Truman offers will weaken it. And though the Allies know that japan’s defeat is certain, it is a measure of their task that President Truman finds victory only half won—a, warning underlined in the fact that no holiday was declared in America to mark V-E Day. It is still possible for the Japanese to hope that their defeat will not be the defeat of unconditional surrender. Her strength, as a land Power, is as yet largely untouched. Moreover, as Britain’s Minister of Production has now said, the same strength cannot be brought to bjear on Japan as was applied against Germany. Distance, as Mr Lyttelton explains, favours Japan. There are other factors from which the enemy may draw comfort. A statement by Dean Acknerman, printed yesterday, points to one. There will doubtless, he says, be tremendous pressure to use a large part of the American merchant fleet to feed Europe. Other phases of reconstruction in the west will also press heavily. The. Allies will lose nothing by waging a propaganda war. But it would be unwise to expect it to have any major effect.