"ABOUT TO BEGIN"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 72, 22 September 1943, Page 5

"ABOUT TO BEGIN"

GREAT OFFENSIVES

PROSPECT IN ASIA & EUROPE (By Telegraph—rres.« Assticintlnn—Copyright.) Rec. 10.45 a.m. NEW YORK, Sept. 21.

"Great offensives in which our full strength will be hurled against the enemy in Asia and Europe are just about to begin," declared General G. C. Marshall, United States Chief of Staff, addressing the American Legion Convention at Omaha. "Now at last," he said, "we are ready to carry the war to the enemy with power and force. We hope it will bring an early conclusion to the war."

General Marshall said that preparations which had been made in North Africa and Sicily were about to be made in Italy for support of huge ground and air forces, and for a long time similar preparations had been under way in Britain and in the Pacific.

"It will discourage the Japanese," he said, "to learn that our most difficult problem is to find sufficient bases from which to operate the vast forces to be poured into the Pacific for rearrangement of the Son of Heaven's affairs with his military clique, but these matters are not the result of a propaganda campaign, of temporary enthusiasm, or of special interests.

"We must proceed in the most businesslike manner possible, and make this war so terrible to the enemy and so overwhelming in character that never again can a small group of dictators find sufficient following to destroy the peaceful security of the civilised world."