THE JAPANESE MENAGE

Evening Star, Issue 24415, 29 January 1943, Page 2

THE JAPANESE MENAGE

AUSTRALIA STILL FEARS MAJOR ATTACK CASABLANCA DECISIONS WELCOMED (N.Z.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent) SYDNEY, January 2S. " Co-ordinated aggressiveness will henceforth ibe the Allied order of hittle In the scheme of global strategy formulated at the Casablanca conference, priority must be given to the European theatre. But the war witli Japan can no longer be relegated to a holding operation. The promise of maximum aid to China presupposes the reopening of the Burma link as a prelude to blows at the heart of the Japanese enemy. In the Pacific the emphasis must be upon naval.and aerial activities aimed at the severance ol the Japanese long lines of communication and at closing in upon the Japanese mainland." This Australian appreciation of the great Allied plan for victory is made by tho military correspondent of the 'Sydney Morning Herald.' " Keenly alive to the dangers of allowing Japan to consolidate and develop her Pacific and Asiatic co-pros-perity spheres, Australia will watch eagerly for concrete evidence that this theatre has not been overlooked in the new strategy of global war," says the ' Herald ' in an editorial, applauding " this most momentous conference." " Partial diversion of the Allied naval and air strength now, within the framework of the agreed global strategy, might save great loss and bloodshed in the Pacific later on."" MR CURTIN'S VIEWS.

That the Japanese have enormously strengthened their South-west Pacific defensive arc, running through an unbroken chain of more than 2,000 miles of island bases from the Celebes to the Solomons, is the inescapable deduction to be. drawn from General MacArthur's communiques of the past few weeks. The thickening line of enemy airfields and naval bases under our continual air attack tells its own plain story of the Japanese development of a great fortified ring around their conquered territories. Australian war observers are, however, far from being assured that these Japanese efforts have leen purely defensive and designed primarily to per-* mit unhindered exploitation of the resources of the Netherlands East Indies and Malaya. The Prime Minister, Mr J. Curtin, reiterated Australia's fears when he told the Federal Parliament that " there is no portent suggesting that the enemy has had a rebuff sufficient to deter him from the task he has set himself."

At a subsequent Press conference the Prime Minister elaborated this statement when he said: " In their past offensive moves the Japanese failed to the strength of the Allied resistance, but with a stroke of luck they might have had a major concentration stronger than the resistance we could offer. Australia fears that the present Japanese - shipping and plane concentrations are just so offensively designed." While such fears of a new major enemy drive may be exaggerated, it is clear that Australia's healthy realism towards the Japanese menace has nothing in common with the earlier complacency, which proved so expensive to the Allies. It is certain, too. that the enemy efforts around the periphery of their entire South Pacific and Indian Ocean domains are on a greater scale than ever before. These heavily-manned and well-stocked Japanese bases could quickly be converted from defensive to offensive purposes. MORE AIR POWER NEEDED. Australia recognises that the Allied island-hopping offensive against Japan is merely a. palliative and not a final solution of the problem in the Pacific, but her war observers believe that additional air strength in the Pacific would weaken Japan's power before she could put into execution any existing threat. Were 50 bombers to attack Rabaul and the other enemy bases mentioned daily in the communiques where 10 attack to-day, Japan's Josses would' almost certainly be such that she could no longer think in terms of expanding her conquests. Finally and irrevocably, she would be forced on that defensive which is an essential preliminary to inevitable defeat. It is widely hoped in Australia that a minor outcome of the Casablanca conference may be the provision of that additional air strength.