IMPATIENT AMERICANS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIII, Issue 22, 24 December 1942, Page 5

IMPATIENT AMERICANS

URGE NEW PACIFIC MOVES. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, Dec. 23. "The war in the Pacific faces its biggest battles in ]9J3," declares Mr C. Hurd, of the Washington bureau of the New York Times. "Neither the Japanese nor Americans have yet thrown into notion such a fleet or such a number of planes as will certainly come to grips during the next year." With the Japanese as yet on the defensive in only a small part of their vast holdings, American war observers arc increasingly predicting fresh enemy moves on a grand scale. Mr Hurd says that attempts to land on the American Pacific coast or to repeat the attack on Pearl Harbour are entirely within the realms of possibility. It is certain, ho declares, that Japan will make a major move in the Pacific which will inevitably lead to great battles by sea and air.

Thus, a feeling is reported to be growing throughout the United States that America's most pressing military task lies against Japan. The main support for the idea of concentration on the Pacific, even at the expense of other fronts, comes from the formerly isolationist Middle West. Tho advocates of this course are pressing strongly for the immediate dispatch to China of sufficient bombers "to blast every source of supply and communication line that Japan is now maintaining with such apparent Treedom." Congressman Knutson (Republican, Minnesota) has called for the transfer to the Pacific of every American submarine that is now in the Atlantic and. Mediteranean "to torpedo out of existence the now free sea-lanes by which Japan is replenishing her island bases." A columnist of the New York Sun, Mr D. Lawrence, also urges a greater flow of American ships, planes, and men to the Pacific front, and writes: "If the British Navy is going to be of any help to the United States Navy in the Pacific, if the aircraft which arc being built in such huge quantities arc to be of avail to the mcagro American forces in tho Pacific, the time for that help is now. If it is not given now the Japanese can consolidate their positions and entrench themselves for several years." "The bitter Gona-Buna struggle may well bo visualised as a microcosm of the whole Pacific war," declares tho Sydney Morning Herald in an editorial. "Just as tho Japanese have entrenched themselves in New Guinea by making the utmost use of the time between the invasion and the counter-attack, so they are clinching their grip on the vast_ empire which they have over-run, consolidating it within a protective ring and striving to extract from its resources the means of carrying on a protracted war. Time is on their side in the sense that tho longer they arc left in possession the harder it will be to throw them out."

There is little doubt, however, that those who are responsible for tho United Nations' global strategy now view the war in the Pacific much more sympathetically than may have been tho ease six months ago. Tho increased' numbers of Allied troops at various bases in this theatre are clearly not intended for purely defensive purposes. It may be that valid criticism of the Allied holding policy will be answered not by the obvious, slow and costly development of tho present Panuan and Solomons campaigns but by bolder strokes.