EFFECT OF JAP DRIVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 135, 5 December 1944, Page 5

EFFECT OF JAP DRIVE

NEXT TWO MONTHS VITAL

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

NE'VV YORK, December 3. The Chungking correspondent of the United Press quotes a "well-informed quarter" as saying that the next 60 days will determine whether China can be knocked out of the war. President Chiang Kai-shek has been trading space for time, but he is running out of space now and unless the Chinese hold Kweiyang until the Burma Road is reopened China may be totally defeated.

The loss of Kunming would knock out the Fourteenth Air Force, which I has long been China's most potent (single weapon. It would also nullify I the long and costly Burma campaign to open a land supply route from India with Kunming as the terminus. The possibility of Japanese threats in the future cannot be over-emphasised. Further Chinese military reverses would enable Japan to consolidate her hold on the Asiatic mainland, adding a year, or possibly years, to the war. The Japanese offensive in southern and south-eastern China has already exploited weaknesses in the ChineseAmerican partnership, testing the basic strategy of American help for China, says the Kunming correspondent of the Associated Press. It is quite possible that the enemy aiming for Kweiyang will also strike for Kunming and Chungking, in an attempt to offset the prospective opening of the Ledo Road. The Americans may be forced to take extraordinary measures to save their tremendous military investment here. . . - , PARTLY NEUTRALISED. The Japanese have already partially neutralised the value of the Ledo Road by the offensive against China's south-eastern forces, who were ultimately to be equipped with material sent over the Ledo Road. It is probable that the equipment and training that were expended in preparing the Chinese Expeditionary Force for the Burma Road offensive would have saved south-eastern China.

Brigadier-General Frank Dorn, commander of the American force that trained and helped to supply the Chinese Expeditionary Force, said in a recent interview that he hoped the Ledo Road would be open by Christmas. It is questionable, however, whether even a military.' junction along the road between the Chinese and the Allied forces v/orking in from India will be effected by then. Apparently, says the correspondent, a fundamental error in estimating the Chinese military situation was making the Ledo Road the first order of business. It is now obvious that the American bases in China were never secure, and the American programme never got round to preparing the Chinese to protect the bases. The. plans called for supplying and equipping ■ such forces from the tonnages sent over the road.

Consequently the Japanese are now consolidating a land link virtually between Manchuria and Indo-China, and the Fourteenth Air Force has lost the bases for its highly-successful sea sweeps against. Japanese shipping, in addition to the opportunity to support a potential American landing on the China coast.

The Japanese v will find the going tough if, after they capture Kweiyang, they strike against Kunming. 200 miles to the south-west. Terrain better suited for defence than the Kweichow Mountains can hardly be found in China.

The possibility that the Japanese will strike towards Yunnan from Indo-China is also an ever-present threat. • General Dorn says flatly: "It is a danger point. I wish I knew their plans."