NOTES AND COMMENTS

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 126, 23 February 1944, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

The official communique detailing the results of the American attack on -the Japanese naval base at Truk, in the Carolines, is almost sensational in its record of so much havoc caused to the enemy at such trifling cost. The results, moreover, constitute an impressive endorsement of the offensive spirit in warfare. There seems little doubt that the enemy was caught unprepared for such a demonstration of the offensive spirit in action, which in this particular enterprise has returned such satisfying dividends. The strange part of it is that the enemy thus far has made no attempt at a counterstroke with the object of restoring the damage to Japanese prestige administered in the Bismarcks and the Carolines. On the contrary, the latest operations in the Bismarck atolls reveal an atmosphere suggesting a spirit of defeatism on the part of the enemy. Latest statements from Tokio on the subject declare that the main Japanese fleet is being kept intact for the decisive hour. The Germans also kept their fleet more or less intact after the Battle of Jutland in the last war by the simple expedient of keeping it in safe harbour. But they lost it in the end, without tiring a shot.

Areas in London and other cities devastated by enemy action have been cleared and made into allotments for growing vegetables, and on one large space near St. Paul’s Cathedral <a sports meeting was held recently. But that does not complete the story by finy means. Many people have won.dered what was done with the millions of tons of rubble, once fine buildings, that lay about the damaged zones. It seems that the authorities needing 30,000,000 tons of material for the construction of airfields—the runway concrete is 9 inches thick—obtained no fewer than 1,250,000 tons of “hard core” from the bombed areas of London alone. That is where no small portion of the rubble went, but much more was needed for the total area of the runways and perimeter tracks of British airfields is nearly 160,000,000 square yards, equivalent to 9000 miles of road 30 feet wide. Altogether the airfields cover 250,000 acres, and the total cost of the average field is between one and two million pounds. In 1914-18 there were seven airfields in Great-Britain and today there are over 300, each occupying from , 2 to 2% square miles. It is indeed the aircraft-carrier off the coast of Europe.