Evening Post. SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1944. IN RABAUL?

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 5, 8 January 1944, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1944. IN RABAUL?

Tokio radio is concerned a"bout the deterioration in the position of Kabaul, a southern bastion of Japan's Pacific arc. To some extent this softening of the underbelly of expanded Japan resembles the softening of Europe's underbelly by Allied action against Italian Africa and against Italy herself. The world now knows that the Italian navy refused to be tempted into a fleet battle by the southern danger in 1942-43, but the world remains in doubt as to whether Japan's proud navy will acpept the Allied challenge, or whether Japan will deem Eabaul and New Britain of insufficient importance to risk a decisive naval engagement with the main fleet thrown in. The island of New Britain is rtot to Japan what Sicily was to Italy, but neither is the Japanese navy half so tolerant of imputations of inferiority as the Italian navy was; and there can be no doubt that though Rabaul is remote from Japan, its loss would represent a blow to Japanese "face" as well as a strategic defeat; and the loss of Eabaul without a major Japanese naval effort to save it would dim the lustre of Japan's navy, would put some tarnish on the Tsushima tradition, and certainly would not add to the prestige at sea of the Rising Sun, which has risen in New Britain in 1942 only (it seems) to set sullenly in 1944. Whether Tokio radio has authority to speak for Japan's high-spirited navy is not clear. Tokio radio may be speaking on its individual responsibility, or it may be speaking in order to misinform, when it emphasises the "disadvantage of our forces" owing to the Allies' possession of aerodromes and mastery of the air. The Japanese naval command and air command know that these aerodromes did not fall to the Allies by accident, but were won by successful war, and the same remark applies to the air mastery, which is qualitative as well as quantitative. The Japanese naval command and air command will therefore find no self-excuse in Tokio radio's story of Japan's disadvantage. On them rests a very real responsibility if the first serious dent in the Japanese arc is made in New Britain, implying an inherent weakness in the whole strategy of Japan's extended front. On Japan's strategy, as on Germany's . strategy, was thrown the responsibility of capitalising military expansion by finding lines which could be permanently held, which would not be so remote as to endanger supply, and which would be a source of strength, not weakness, when aggressor nations were compelled to revert to the defensive. The complete failure of Germany's advanced African front to pass this test is now selfevident. The parallel failure of Germany's Russian front as a strategic anchor is now likely to be proved; and only in Italy has German defence reached some degree of doubtful stabilisation. A similar strategic failure threatens Japan. New Britain and Rabaul are a beginning. But Japan has what Hitler has not —a battle fleet to risk or to conserve. If the late Admiral Togo, victor of Tsushima, is able to hold converse with latter-day Japanese admirals, he will probably have to admit that modern air power, had it existed in his day, would have cramped his style a good deal. Whether a modern Togo would have made a better or a different use of the submarine and the aircraft-carrier as raiding weapons in the Pacific is a question that must have occurred to the present-day Tojo more than once, especially since he began to address to the Japanese nis warning speeches as Premier. There is no visible parallel between German and Japanese notions of the offensive use of submarines, and in this respect the war effort of the Allies in the Pacific appears to have been lucky. It should be noted, however, that Admiral Halsey speaks of "two Japanese aircraft-carriers at present operating in the South Pacific, and not yet located." Search for raiders in the broad and isle-studded Pacific was difficult in yon Spec's day; today it is not less difficult. In the atolls and i islands and archipelagos the white man's warfare has found a terrain that is novel and perplexing. The U.S. Seventh Air Force is' "using pinpoint navigation to find and raid infinitesimal islands which are no larger than some individual targets in Berlin"; yet, as the Tarawa action shows, heavily-bombed atolls can retain great fire power. There is a symbolic value in New Zealand airmen's participation in the raiding of Rabaul. The Pacific islands have ceased to be unconsidered trifles, and must from now on be regarded as lines of defence (or, alternatively, as sally-points for an enemy) on which depends the peace of white populations whose whole tenure has become a question of man-power. The technique of Pacific warfare we are mastering. We have the machines. But the problem of reinsuring the white man-power of the future is no nearer solution.