CONFIDENCE FELT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20864, 17 August 1942, Page 3

CONFIDENCE FELT

AMERICAN VICTORY BATTLE IN SOLOMONS REACTION IN BRITAIN (10.30 a.m.) LONDON, Aug. 16. The Solomon Islands battle is regarded in London as a limited operation of the highest importance. Victory—which is regarded with some confidence—would mean that the Americans could establish important airfields and bases which would be an insurance of the safety of Australia and New Zealand while a base would be given for the start of a further attack against the Japanese in New Guinea and Java and then other occupied territories. The Manchester Guardian, in a leading article, says: “It is possible that the Japanese, finding their hold round Tulagi endangered, will bring naval and air forces from strongholds in the Caroline and Marshal Islands to dispute command of the sea: “This first Allied ‘offensive’ against Japan is greatly encouraging. Our task as soon as possible is to move against Japan simultaneously at several vulnerable points which she offers. Except in one small area of the Solomons, still smaller in New Guinea, she is not having to fight hard anywhere at present, but her military effort is distributed over distances so vast that she cannot easily transfer weight from one erea to another. “If we are to strain her resources 'until they crack, we will have to attack her in Burma, from India, in the Bay of Bengal, in China, in Aleutian Islands and from the air in her home islands. The Tulagi operation may not be large in itself, but the moral of a clear-cut and unquestionable success in the Pacific would be everywhere understood as clearly as a similar success in Europe. and Africa, could we but goin it.’’