Evening Post TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1942. SINGAPORE MARKS NEW CHAPTER

Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 40, 17 February 1942, Page 4

Evening Post TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1942. SINGAPORE MARKS NEW CHAPTER

The war in the Far East resembles in some respects the war ill Greece. When the Germans had completed their work in Greece and in Greece s immediate outlying islands, they had reached the stage which the Japanese have reached in the Malay Peninsula and in its adjacent island, Singapore. But the. Germans did not stop. From Greece and tfce Greek islands they* advanced vigorously against Crete; and the Japanese, emulating the Germans, are certain to redouble their war efforts to secure those farther islands that are the keys to the East Indian seaways and also the stepping stones to Australia. So far, the parallel between Greece and Crete on the one hand, and Malaya and the Dutch islands on the other hand, holds good. If Mediterranean history is to be further reproduced in the East Indies, then a land campaign in North Australia, resembling the Libyan campaign, might follow. Today the world knows fairly definitely where the Middle Efist front has become stabilised, though it is still moving in Libya, as in Russia. But the world does not yet know where the Far East front will become stabilised. That fluid front may never reach Australia or New Zealand. It may become stabilised in the East Indian islands and New Guinea,"with sporadic naval happenings elsewhere* Nevertheless, any military view, or any popular judgment, that assumed the impossibility of invasion of the Dominions of the South-western Pacific would be short-sighted and anaemic \ The peoples of these Dominions must look facts in the face. No one yet knows when and where the attempt of Japan's army to break through the intervening screen of islands and advance southwards will be stopped. Experience shows that it is dangerous to rest on assumptions; a supreme example of, assumption is Singapore itself. Besides being resolutely prepared to resist invasion,' the peoples of the Dominions must be prepared to resist a peace drive. If Japan occupies the screen of rich islands, she will be in an excellent strategic position to apply the Hitler policy of periodical peace drive, because Japan will be able to say: "Here I am in these tropical islands, near my bases, but far from yours; you are unable physically to evict me; better make peace!" Tojo's repeated warnings to Australians to discontinue a suicidal war, and Japanese compliments to Singapore gallantry, strongly indicate that japan may suggest a compromise peace when she has seized all the islands she wants at present. But such a compromise peace would be worse than the invasion of these Dominions. If Australians and New Zealanders resist peace drives, they will in the long run also Overthrow the Japanese invader. But to confirm japan in the possession of so many Pacific springboards in 1942 Would be to make Japanese conquest of our countries almost a certainty before 1962. The fall of Singapore marks tlie beginning of a new chapter in the war, mainly because it is a resounding crash. No little tree, but a tall tree, has fallen. Those New Zealanders and Australians who find it so hard to detach themselves from their gardening or their fishing' or their gambling that they do not hear little trees fall, will hardly fail to notice that Singapore has fallen. Singapore resembles the Writing oh the wall. It is equivalent to an ultimatum frOm Japan that New Zealanders and Australians must either engage in total war, or must make a compromise now amounting to a complete surrender later on. No amount of pacifist propaganda can conceal the fact that any attempt to appease a successful Japan—a Japan in ppssession of all the best strategic jumping-off places for Pacific expansion—would be national suicide for the democracies of the South-western Pacific. For too many years they followed the line of least- resistance. They have to recognise now a strategic threat that is not an immediate threat to Britain, nor to America, but which to these Dominions is a threat both immediate and direct. In the long run, there is no outside help for any people that fails to extract from itself the last ounce of selfhelp. Is not the extraction of the last ounce of self-help the only title for commanding help from others, ' and can New Zealand "and Australia declare that their whole economy is yet keyed to that supreme issue? j