THE PACIFIC INITIATIVE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25276, 13 July 1943, Page 4

THE PACIFIC INITIATIVE

The Allies—mainly United States and Australian forces, with some New Zealand naval and air units—have taken the initiative in a determined way in both the New Guinea and Solomon Islands areas, and in both areas they can claim positive successes. The most sensational of recent achievements in this recrudescence of heavy fighting in the South-west and South Pacific zones was the naval victory against Japan in the restricted area of the Kula Gulf, in the Central Solomons. In a series of engagements in tricky waters a United States task force was able, presumably with the assistance of land-based aircraft, to destroy at* least nine Japanese warships, three being cruisers and the rest in lighter categories. These losses have increased Japanese naval casualties since the start of the Pacific war to a total that must be causing the enemy considerable concern. Cruisers and destroyers both come high in the list of vital craft, and Japanese strength in both classes has been cut to a dangerous minimum. Even allowing generously for replacement, expert opinion is that with these latest losses Japan can have scarcely more than a score of cruisers in commission and under 80 destroyers. The elaborate communications system which Japan must maintain in the Pacific, especially in supplying the Solomons and New Guinea, makes imperative the need for escort vessels in the categories which are suffering so heavily in clashes with the Americans. Continuing cruiser and destroyer losses must, indeed, lend support to the theory that Japan will eventually abandon the Solomons, and also the island bases to the north on New Britain and New Ireland, including the main forward base at Rabaul. It may be accepted as axiomatic that in the pattern of conquest envisaged at Tokio the possibility of Axis defeat in the west has been weighed. This would present, perhaps, a consequent need by Japan to shorten her communication lines and go on to the defensive, with the bargaining power contained in her valuable area of conquest as her best asset. It is a possibility that naturally has been considered also by the Allies, and there is encouraging evidence that United Nations strategy is being,framed to nullify it. General MacArthur, whose command position has been strengthened for the period of the present operations by control over the South Pacific (New Zealand-Solomons) area as well as the South-west Pacific area, lias long laid it down that his airq if “massive strokes” against Japan “ rather than a costly island-to-island advanced” Dr Evatt, the Australian Minister of External Affairs, has declared from England that “no one had ever proposed to spend weeks or months in a separate attack on every island held by the Japanese,” and has emphasised that such operations as those now being conducted are merely preliminary to a strategy of bringing pressure on the enemy from all points, including . China. The conception of an island-hopping war in .the Pacific cannot be- so airily dismissed as the Australian Minister now generously suggests, but his statement, with other 1 authoritative utterances lately from London and Washington, presents the most welcome evidence that an offensive in the Pacific is now being planned on the grand scale.

AWAITING THE DAY The message of General Eisenhower to the people of France is specific. Sicily, he has informed them, provides the first stage in the Allied invasion of the European Continent. It will be followed by other moves. ' The commander-in-chief naturally did not outline the future steps that the Allies contemplate when to their Mediterranean stepping - stones— Cyprus, Malta, Pantellaria, Lampedusa—they have added Sicily, possibly Sardinia and Corsica. But he leaves no room for doubt that the landings on Sicily represent in actual fact invasion; that, although the operations now in progress may have limited immediate objectives, they are part of a great and purposeful strategy for the assault upon Hitler and his satellites on Axis soil and the soil of those countries which are at present held in thrall to the Axis. General Eisenhower’s message was not sent out to the subject people of France as a gesture, but with the necessary object of warning them that the time to strike at their oppressors has not yet arrived —quite. There is ample evidence that France, like the other subject nations, is ready to join the fight for her own liberation when the time does come. The wild scenes reported last week on the departure of the “slave trains” from French railway - stations for Germany are symptomatic of the growing impatience of the French under a bitter and demanding foreign regime. The pretence that the puppet Government at Vichy, with Pierre Laval at its head, is in charge of the arrangements by which French workers are sent to Germany has long been dropped. So, too, has the fiction that these working men are “ recruits ” for the factories of the Reich. Latest reports are that German agents, both military and civil, have the task in hand of filling the “ slave trains,” and are carrying it out with merciless determination. But Frenchmen are retaliating as furiously. Bomb outrages and assassinations are accounting for literally hundreds of Nazis in the occupied Republic, and making the lives of the rest a torment of fear; in certain districts, as in the rugged Haute-Savoie region, absconders from the Nazj labour drives, “ partisahs ” of all classes and political shades, are conducting a vigorous form of hit-and-run warfare on an organised scale against the German overlords. Already, reports suggest, many Frenchmen are armed, or will have access to arms on the day that the call comes to rise—a day which, the latest news indicates, is now appreciably nearer. It is safe to believe that in their planning and practical preparations for that day they have not been without the assistance and explicit instruction of the Allies.