WAR BACKWATER

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20858, 10 August 1942, Page 4

WAR BACKWATER

AUSTRALIAN ZONE ATTITUDE OF ALLIES NATIONAL UNITY PLEA (Bv Telegraph—Press Assn. -Copvt ight.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) (2 p.m.) SYDNEY. Aug. 10. “Australia is regarded overseas as the back-water of the war. That is the rock bottom of the problem,’declared Mr. P. C. Spender, a member of the Advisory War Council, in a statement on the war situation. For tome lime now Australian representatives had sat on the Paeiuc War Council and the British War Cabinet but had failed either to impress Allied strategy with _ the strategic importance of Australia or to have the Pacific reorganised as a primary zone of war, not inferior in importance to the European zone. There had been much talk of a second front, but no acknowledgment that the Pacific offered that front. There is no need not to be confident of the final outcome of the war in Australia or elsewhere, but there was a desperate and urgent need to apprehend the deep gravity of the position and that the war was going badly for us. The last people we ought to fool are ourselves, said Mr. Spender. Who addel: “Time is not with us. It is the most powerful ally of our enemies and the longer our enemies are given to digest their foully-won gains the more difficult it will be to compel them to disgorge and the greater will become the might of their blows against us " We spoke of building up overwhelming forces of ship's, planes dnd tanks when what most we hoped for was to escape .the losses which War demanded. We Could not escape losses if victory was to be won, arid the sooner we realised this the less those losses would be. The key to victory was speed and Mr. Spender apealed to .the people of Australia to put aside political differences and face the enemy as one people.