Evening Post. MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1942. "MIDWAY" TO VICTORY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 133, 8 June 1942, Page 4

Evening Post. MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1942. "MIDWAY" TO VICTORY

There is a grim sort cff humour in the comment of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, Admiral Nimilz, on the progress of the great naval battle of Midway Island. "Pearl Harbour has now been partially avenged," he says. "The vengeance will not be complete till Japanese sea power has been reduced to impotence. We have made substantial progress in this direction, and can, perhaps, claim to be 'Midway' to our objective." The objective of the United Nations in this war is complete victory over their I enemies and the destruction of the system of enslavement they represent. So far that system has pushed its frowning facade to cover its inward rottenness far and wide in East and West,' but there are signs now that the crazy structure is beginning to crack and crumble. Its greatest land power, the German Wehrmacht, after an uninterrupted run of success in the West, came up against a.resistance too much for its momentum in Russia, and the whole facade reeled with the shock and has begun to show signs of tottering to a fall. And

the British Air Force has struck blows at its rear in the West that may hasten the collapse.' And now in the East, on the other side of the world, its greatest sea power, the Japanese navy, similarly'elated with easy triumphs, has stretched Out too far in the Pacific and sustained its first heavy reverse at Midway Island. This naval action, which is not yet over, has resulted in such severe losses to a part of the Japanese main battle fleet that Admiral Nimitz can describe it, with the knowledge of the man on "the spot, as a "momentous victory in the making." It is all that. Over two months ago H. C. Ferraby, the distinguished British naval com. mentator, in a broadcast on Japan's naval achievements and prospects, deolared that Japanese naval losses in various waters already amounted to one-fifth of the total force with which they started the war. Since then there have been other losses by submarine or aerial activity, piecemeal Sn themselves, but mounting up in the aggregate, followed by the Battle of the Coral Sea, where it was possible fer the Allied naval'forces to deal a shrewd blow at a powerful

Japanese naval squadron, sinking several ships in the encounter. Then comes tlie Battle of Midway Island, where aircraft-carriers have been definitely destroyed and capital ships and heavy cruisers damaged go badly that it is believed that gome may never reach their 'bases, Midway liland is 2250 miles from Yokohama and 1150 from Pearl Harbour, the chief base of the United States Pacific Fleet, so that the Japanese have a long way to go before they get safe home. Tlie Americans may be in a position to intercept them and complete the victory" now "in the miking." There is a hint of nemesis in the date of the battle, six months to a day after the treacherous attack on Pearl Harbour, which Americans have sworn to avenge. But there is more than a hint in the Japanese | action, not only here, but at Dutch Harbour and Diego Suarez; and, not. least, in the Tasman Sea off the Australian coast, of an overweening confidence in their capacity and a defiance of the doctrines of naval strategy that Ferraby believed would lead to their undoing. The Japanese have ignored the one great factor in sea power—the fleet, in being, he says. No overseas conquests are safe so long as the enemy fleet is in being. This the British learned at the opening of the Napoleonic Wars in a series of disasters which lost them

the control of th© Mediterranean, It was Nelson who stopped the rot, lay* ing it down in a letter: "Above all, I hope we shall have no buccaneering expeditione. Such services fritter away our troops and ships, when they are so much more wanted for more important occasions." The Japanese have frittered away in such expeditions a portion of their navy they can ill afford to lose, and aU the time the United States fleet, more powerful than their own, has been in being, It is possible that Admiral Yamamoto, the Japanese Commander-in* Chief, deliberately challenged the American fleet at Midway Island, If so, be looks like paying the penalty.