FACING A SIEGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1942, Page 7

FACING A SIEGE

POSITION OF RANGOON

LARGE FORCE NEEDED IN BURMA

RUGBY, February 25. 'The Battle off the BiHn and Sittang Rivers has brought the Japanese perilously near Rangoon, which faces a siege," says "The Times." "The reported fall of Pegu, 50 miles north-west of the capital, cutting the railway to the Burma Road, indicates that ihe situation is desperate. "It -would be unwise to place too much reliance on the difficulties of the terrain along the frontier dividing northern Thailand and

Indo-China from the Shan States

The Japanese near Dagwin have

already driven the defenders back

"Where, further to the north, the road bends eastward :t is rough, hillycountry, .and ticre is, only a motor road across the frontier, but the Japanese have shewn aptitude for advancing without roads and penetrating country that is supposed to be reasonably secure against attack.

"The only existing road on the northern frontier extends northward from Chiengmai (in Thailand) to Kengtung. An advance beyond Kengtung would not be difficult, either due west into Upper Burma at Thazi (40 miles north of Yamethin), or northward to Lashio, to which, several passable roads lead, and it would take a large defence force to guard all pos-! sible avenues of attack in this i-egion. AIM TO DIVIDE DEFENCE? "The Japanese are also reported to, be massing forces north-west of Chiengmai. If they succeed in cross-1 ing the Salween, which here is about 20 miles inside the frontier, they would soon "reach serviceable roads. "One of these leads from Mawhmai to Loilem, on the Thazi-Kengtung road, and another to Mawchi, which is the site of important tin and wolfram mines.

"A recently-constructed road from Mawchi to Toungoo would facilitate a. thrust to cut the main railway at Toungoo, thus dividing Rangoon from the forces in Upper Burma.

"Attacks on these points are subsidiary to the main assault, which is directed at Pegu, but the possibility of a diversity of advances precludes a concentration of the defensive strength in the south and necessitates the maintenance of considerable forces in Upper Burma and the Shan States.

"The Sittang River is not a formidable obstacle to .an army which is evidently highly framed in river crossings. It is almost impossible to destroy all the boats abounding in the villages on the banks of the Sittang, and, moreover, there would be no difficulty in building rafts from bamboos."