Safety of N.Z and Australia Not Yet Established

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 59, 11 March 1943, Page 5

Safety of N.Z and Australia Not Yet Established

(Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, Mar. 9. “No theatre of war has given rise to more conflicting opinion than the Southern Pacific. However, since the man on the spot must see most of the game, then the reports from General MacArthur’s Headquarters and from Mr. Curtin himself that the Japanese air, shipping, and troop concentrations to the north of this continent have not been greatly weakened by the annihilation of the Bismarck Sea convoy will be heard throughout the world with grave disquiet. Everything is being done here on the assumption that the Japanese will come again,” writes the New Guinea correspondent of the Sydney Herald to-day. The correspondent reports a high officer as disparaging the view that the Japanese are in any sense on the run. One of the most authoritative of observers’ statements on the implications of the Bismarck Sea victory is that oi the American United Press correspondent, Mr. Yates McDaniel, who has just completed a 10,000 mile air tour of the Southwest Pacific. Mr. McDaniel was in the air during much of the Bismarck Sea battle. “The Allied victory,” he says, “did not wipe out the threats of a further enemy drive to the south. The impression that it could force the Japanese to abandon oases in the island chain north of Australia is entirely wrong,” ho said. Mr. McDaniel goes on: “The Japanese held Papua until they were annihilated, and Guadalcanal 1 , in the Solomons, till they were overwhelmed. Nothing suggests that they will give up Lae or their half-dozen other bases in Northern Now Guinea just because a convoy failed to get through.” It has been revealed that the air