Evening Post.

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 37, 12 August 1942, Page 4

Evening Post.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12, 1942

"ON FROM ISLAND UNTO

ISLAND"

I' The task ■of ■••reconquering- the Pacific, island by isi and; from the Japanese, needs study. The Japanese, by means of a flying start, bought these islands cheaply. They will sell them dearly. If Japan made up a balance-sheet of her island gains, the cost side would be low, the profit high. From the buying and selling point of view, a great many of the islands were business that Japan simply could not refuse. The islands almost dropped into her mouth. But if the United Nations are to buy back these islands piecemeal, at a very high pjice, the United Nations will have to be content with a far less attractive balance-sheet, because, unlike Japan's balance-sheet, it will reveal a high rate of cost. A high rate of cost is inevitable, and the only question is whether it will be too high. That question remains to be settled, and tlie present Solomon Islands battle is "one step towards its settlement. We proceed by trial and error. The price may not prove to be too severe. If it does turn out to be severely high, the Pacific situation may have to be studied anew to discover whether ther,e is any better! Way of defeating Japan than the piecemeal way. The piecemeal way may be roughly described as wresting Japan's easily-gotten gains in a piecemeal fashion, island by island,.stepping-stone by steppingstone, or group by group. Americans are by nature students and experimenters. Their mental activity seldom runs in merely one field. Though tlie Solomon Islands battle is, a United1 Nations offensive operation, its strategy is still defensive. We want the Solomon Islands in order to push Japan farther away from the vital life-line which unites by sea America and Australasia. For that reason,'the Solomon Islands, or some of them, may be worth buying back at % hpavy cost from the profiteering- Japanese, whose business astuteness is founded on the early start^icil they stole on December 7;. Biit * when a the Solomon Islands balance-sheet is \ drawn up by the United Nations,' and when its costs to- be.-assessed with some degree of-accuracy, it will then becon*a a matter of judgment with thq Allies ivhetlier, at the known price paid in the Solomons, it will be practicable to give the same methods of attack a general application to .all those insular strongholds which, in addition to the Solomons, Japan holds, and from which she probably operates the land-based aeroplane, a weapon now highly rated by ~ both combatants. The Solomon Islands battle is teaching niany lessons (still to be plotted out and learned) about the tactical values of all- the various weapon* employed, the land-based aeroplane included. When Tennyson wrote "on from island unto island, to the gateways; of the day," he pictured an imaginative progress.; In war, the jumps frOm island to island must be made over summer seas tinged with blood. Nob one can confidently predict what the Solomon Islands balancesheet wil I; show, and what lessons it will teach. It seems to be premature for the "Sydney Morning Herald" to say that, if the United Nations won the present battle, "it would only be the first of many agonising steps before we could hope to place the enemy back where he belongs." The cost of the Solomon Islands step may or may not justify the statement quoted. A more justifiable attitude is that of Admiral King, who warns, from Washington, that Josses are certain, without attempting to forecast whether they will be prohibitive:

It should be understood that the operation is one of the most complicated and"' difficult in warfare. Considerable, losses, such as are inherent in any 'offensive operation must be expected as the price to be paid for hard-won experience/which is essential to the attainment of far-reaching results. ■••■'..''■•

The hard-won experience of the Solomon Islands battle wi J1 help to win future battles against Japan. But to say this is not to say that future battles necessarily will be fought in the same way. There has been a loud call, in Australia and elsewhere, for an Allied offensive, and, in a limited field, what has been called for has now been supplied, with every prospect of a result that will be at least highly informative. Certainly the required infonhation could not have been attained by leaving the initiative to the enemy. One result will be some hard thinking not only for the United Nations but for Japan. There is reason to believe that Japan looks on the conquest of India as being primarily an inside job, just as Goebbels at one time applied that description to the German plan to conquer the United States. If the Japanese are'waiting for someone to open the way for them in India, the blow now struck against them 'in. the Solomon Islands is important not only to the Pacific but to general strategy. Let the Allies take the initiative when and where they , can. Vice-Admiral Ghormley has brilliantly taken it in the Pacific.