NEEDS IN PACIFIC

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25135, 28 January 1943, Page 5

NEEDS IN PACIFIC

PROTEST BY MR CURTIN HOLDING STRATEGY CONDEMNED CANBERRA, Jan. 27. A strong protest against the relegation by the United Nations of the strategy of the South-west Pacific to a holding war was made by the Prime Minister, Mr J. Curtin, in a broadcast to the people of Australia and the United States. The South-west Pacific,” he said, was too crucial to be left to a force of caretakers, and a holding-war policy meant that Japan was buying cheaply the time she required to exploit her new resources for an onslaught which the United Nations would find costly to fight off. Mr Curtin outlined the part which the Australian forces had taken on the sea, land and in the air and the sacrifices that had been made by her sons. “ I would hesitate to delineate what has been done but for the fact that it is necessary to show that we are far from being helpless and inefficient moaners in the face of the enemy,” he said. “We have paid the price for our seal of nationhood. We have paid it cheerfully as a free people in a free cause, and' will go on naying it; but it is also the charter of our right, to share in the common pool of Allied resources. In point of strategy the preservation of Australia is vital to the United Nations, for the earlier the attack against the heart of Japan, the less costly and the more decisive the result will be.

“I put it to the American people: The men of Corregidor can be avenged only if the naval and air strength in this theatre is adequate to the plans of the commander. Any other conception of strategy involves the Pacific war becoming a defensive front until the United Nations have achieved victory everywhere except against Japan.

“ Neither Mr Churchill nor President Roosevelt has placed a time limit on the war against Hitler. Whatever that period may be, however long it may be, it will be a period during which Japan can build up to a strength that may well make her impregnable. Mr Churchill and President Roosevelt know the Australian viewpoint. It is no insular submission. Just as we agreed from the very moment Hitler struck at world freedom in 1939 that we must contribute our share in the global war, so we say that a global war involves the South-west Pacific theatre as an integral part of the total conflict. It cannot be left to an obscure afterwards.

“Greater air and naval strength to support the forces now fighting would have an immediate and significant impact on Japanese plans. It would enable the co-ordination of the Allied fighting power to be brought to bear at places, and in point of time, where their striking power could well be decisive.”