NOTES ON THE WAI

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 3, 3 July 1943, Page 5

NOTES ON THE WAI

PRELIMINARIES

ALLIED OFFENSIVES

Not much can be said in addition to the news of the Allied offensive in the Pacific, which is still in its preliminary stage of initial landings, while the Allied offensive in Europe has not yet I reached that stage. Mr. Churchill has safd more than once in his recent speeches that largescale military operations, particularly amphibious operations, require months of preparation with meticulous care. It has been stated, for instance, that the Allied landings in North Africa took from July, when the decision was finally made, to November, when the landings took place, to prepare. Allied landings on the Continent of Europe, a far more difficult and hazardous job, must take at least as long. It is I now nearly two months since the Tunisian triumph ousted the Axis from Africa, and Mr. Churchill would go no further than to say that ..'.very;., probably there will be heavy fighting in the Mediterranean and elsewhere by the time the leaves of autumn fall." This "deciduous date," as^ Raymond Gram Swing wittily dubbed it in American broadcast comment last night, may mean any time from early September to early October, the autumn or fall in the Northern Hemisphere. There is, of course, nothing to prevent an Allied offensive earlier* if the preparations are complete. There are doubtless serious disadvantages, m delay. While the Allies are perfecting their arrangements for amphibious offensive operations, the Axis will be equally busy trying to strengthen an' complete its defences. Pros and Cons. It is a canon of war that the knockout blow should follow the blow which strikes the adversary to his .*nees with the utmost speed while he is;stulgroggy. This more properly applies to blows struck in a single round o£a bout. The. canon was applied in Tunisia with devastating elfect, but that ended the fight in North Africa. Shifting the. ring to Europe implies another bout, or at least another round. A failure in Europe following an attack immediately after the victory in Tunisia would have largely cancelled out the effect of that disaster on the Axis. The Allies have no such margin of superior strength today that they can afford heavy losses without compensating gains. .■'*•"■' Meanwhile, the delay is not tome wasted: The U-boat menace has been at least temporarily scotched in the Atlantic and Allied shipping makes double gains by avoiding losses there and by shortening the route-to the Middle East through the.Mediterranean by 7000 to 9000 miles compared with the long voyage round Africa via the Cape. Further, the Allies are pounding the Axis war machine from the air and are building up the air nuisteraMn the Mediterranean zone which "srill ba essential to successful landing operations. , ■ .-»-.■; In the Pacific. > The Pacific operations have pr.oved. that point. Nothing else but Allied air superiority amounting almost to xoastery has made possible the free lmpvement, of the Navy and the transports carrying troops for the landings. It was not Japanese surface craft so much as Japanese land-based aircraft that the Allies had to fear in theft* amphibious operations in the northern Solomons and in and about New Guinea. If the main Japanese fleet couid be lured down into the waters of the Coral Sea again by'the Allied, threat to Rabaul. it would suit the United States navy men very nicely. In any event the operations have succeeded well so far. The fight will be hard,-over country in the main as bad aslthat of Guadalcanal and roundBuna and Gona in New Guinea, but there is good reason to hope that the operations will succeed now as they did in the past, and that Rabaul will be laid open to attack at close quarters. If the Japanese fleet comes down to defend Rabaul. all the better. A crushing defeat of; the enemy's main fleet would.= open..the...whole, of the new-won Japanese -empire to Allied sea-power and facilitate landings anywhere within the charmed circle.