AUSTRALIA'S TASK

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 69, 19 September 1944, Page 5

AUSTRALIA'S TASK

WAR ON JAPAN

(Special P.A. Correspondent.) Rec. noon; SYDNEY, Sept. 19. The part to be played by Australian troops in the last stages of the war against Japan had long since been agreed upon in the councils of the United Nations, declared the Prime Minister (Mr. Curtin), in answer to critics, who claimed that the Commonwealth should have had ministerial representation at the Quebec conference. Mr. Churchill was the acknowledged leader of the whole British Empire at war, said Mr. Curtin, and spoke not for Great Britain alone 38 but for every part of the Empire. Mr. Curtin did not specify what would be the role of the Australian forces in the final stages of the Pacific war. The Sydney "Sun," in an editorial, comments that Australia's national honour demands that in the' last stages of the war, as in the final settlement in Tokio, Australian forces shall be in the forefront.

Other commentators, seeking a more specific' indication of the part to be played by Australian troops, point out that militia personnel could not have accompanied Mac Arthur's American forces on the Morotai invasion. Morotai lies two degrees north of the Equator, line beyond which Australian militia cannot be called upon to serve. However, the Army Minister, Mr. Forde, announced recently that more than 80 per cent, of .the men in the militia formations had transferred to the A.1.F., available for service anywhere in the world. Expressing the conviction that Australia will be adequately represented in the last stages of the war against Japan, the Sydney Herald" emphasises that, as disclosed m the Roosevelt-Churchill statement on the Quebec conference, one main problem has been "to find room and opportunity for the marshalling against the Japanese of the massive forces which each and all of the nations concerned are ardent to engage." An indication of the growing part that Britain itself is determined to play in the Pacific is the arrangements now being discussed here for welcoming and entertaining British fighting men who are expected to come to Australia soon.