JAPAN'S ADVANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 28, 1 August 1942, Page 4

JAPAN'S ADVANCE

CRITICAL OUTBURST

MR. HUGHES'S VIEW

(0.C.)

SYDNEY. July 29. me establishment of an operational base by the Japanese at Buna, Papua, last week, followed by the bombing of Townsville, was an unpleasant shock to Australians. The Federal Leader of the United Australia Party, Mr. W. M. Hughes, summed up general feeling when he demanded an uprtodate strategy by the Allies. Addressing a branch of the party, Mr. Hughes said: "We count it as a victory if we manage to hold bur own. During two and a half years of war. not once have we come within a stone's throw of victory. What is the matter with us? We must wake up to the fact that we are fighting an enemy who is not afraid to die, an enemy who is on the offensive everywhere. "We must give up thinking in terms of strategy that proved successful at Agincourt and Crecy. If I were a military leader and not a wretched politician I would day, 'How the hell are we going to out the Japs from Buna unless we open a second front?' To reach Buna the Japs had to come in a convoy, in barges, and in troopships. We have an Air Force on duty there day and night. The Japs ought not to have got there. Every day they are creeping nearer and nearer. Soon they may have established sufficient bases to make a major attack, on Australia itself.

"We have not yejt explained how the Japs fought their way through more than 600 miles of jungle country from Thailand to Singapore. Some say that in the Malayan campaign the Indians gave way. Some Australians declare that the British gave way. But it must be remembered that Australia never had more than one division in Malaya.

"Ransack history, and you can't find anything to parallel the victorious mairch Of Japan ever since.their treacherous attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7. In eight months they have conquered half the world."