PACIFIC DEFENCE MEASURES

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26515, 1 September 1951, Page 7

PACIFIC DEFENCE MEASURES

Mr Dewey Suggests Frontier Line NEW YORK, August 30. The Governor of New York State (Mr Thomas E. Dewey) said to-day that the free nations should draw a Pacific frontier defence line extending from the Arctic to New Zealand. Mr Dewey, who returned to New York last evening after a two months’ fact-finding tour of the Far East, Australia, and New Zealand, was addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention. He said that during his tour he had gained great respect for the allies of the United States. The 190,000,000 people of the United States would not long survive in a sea of 2.000,000,000 Communists, said Mr Dewey in urging that a Pacific frontier line be drawn with the allies of the United States.

Advocating immediate encouragement to resistance within China, Mr Dewey said that the Nationalist Government was good enough for the United States during the war and it “ought to be good enough for us now.” In an interview earlier, Mr Dewey said that to maintain a free Asia, the United States must build a strong, firm policy with every ally it could get to see that there were no more losses for the free world.

Among the areas which should be included in this unified policy for free Asia were:—New Zealand. Australia, Japan, Formosa, the Philippines, Cambodia, Siam, Burma and Indonesia.

Mr Dewey said that the United States policy in Asia had to be a whole policy, or it would fail. "It cannot deal with Asia in bits and pieces as in the past,” he said. “The critical area is South-east Asia—the rice-bowl of the Orient. Food is the greatest necessity. South-east Asia has a food surplus and it is the natural target for the Communists’ next drive.”

Communist Propaganda The Communists were making a propaganda effort in the hope of “scuttling” the Japanese Peace Treaty, because they would benefit if there were no treaty, as the continued United States presence in Japan would prove that it was trying to steal the Orient. Referring to the Korean cease-fire talks. Mr Dewey said that the Communists wanted a truce because it was necessary for them. “They have taken a terrible beating, but nobody knows What the Communists will do.”

The United States should draw a line and let the Communists know what it would do if they crossed it, Mr Dewey suggested. “We have great Allies,” Mr Dewey said. New Zealand and Australia had 4000 men in the Korean front lines. Canada, with a population smaller than the State of New York, had 6000, and every one was a volunteer. He also paid tribute to the Greek, French, British and Turkish troops. Declaring that he went to Korea with some doubt about the Allied claims of the casualties inflicted on the enemy, Mr Dewey said he now believed that the figures of Chinese and North Korean killed were conservative.