A CLEAR PICTURE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 97, 20 January 1944, Page 4

A CLEAR PICTURE

The most interesting, informative, and encouraging picture to date of the war situation in the Southern Pacific is that presented by PearAdmiral Carney, U.S.N.. Chief' of Staff to Admiral Halsey, in his lengthy and comprehensive statement to Press, correspondents. In this the public is given a clear picture, with lucid explanatory notes, of the extent and meaning of the various operations carried out against the Japanese enemy during recent months. For a long time this theatre of the war was to the lay mind a jig-saw puzzle. The pieces have now been fitted into place, revealing that operations separated by great distances over the vast archipelago of the South-west Pacific were all part of a deliberate strategical scheme which is now producing tangible and highly profitable results. To obtain these results, prolonged and laborious effort has been inevitably'necessary, and it has been the protracted period involved while the foundations of successful offensive action were being laid that no doubt has given rise to sceptical opinions published from time to time as to the efficacy of the strategy of island-hopping which appeared to be the main preoccupation of the Allied High Command in this area. Rear-Admiral Carney’s review would appear to answer much of the criticism that has been made in this connexion. Very little, it. would seem, now remains to be accomplished before the Allied offensive can be advanced to the next stage. When the preparations are complete, when the whole position along the arc from the Gilbert Islands to the Solomons has been strongly consolidated, and important' air bases established, the pattern of the Allied offensive-plan will become more sharply and intelligibly delineated. The most encouraging aspect of the situation as outlined by Rear-Admiral Carney is his confident statement that superiority in all three spheres of operation, land, sea, air, has been established over the enemy, and that the initiative has now definitely passed to the Allies. In this respect the hardest task has been accomplished, for the Allies' in this theatre of the war had been compelled by the course of events in the first instance to fight a defensive war under the severest of handicaps. They had to start with inferiority of resources in numbers and equipment, exposed lines of communications, in difficult unfamiliar terrain and trying