WILL RUSSIA FIGHT?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25673, 23 October 1944, Page 3

WILL RUSSIA FIGHT?

WAR AGAINST JAPAN

GREAT POTENTIAL POWER

The unsolved riddle is: What will Soviet Russia do about Japan after Germany has been brought to unconditional surrender? Certainly Tokio's leaders and makers of strategy must be trying frantically to guess the answer to this riddle, writes Mr Hallett Abend, the American commentator. The average man understands perfectly that if we can win Russia into taking part in the struggle in the Far East, the war against Japan will be shortened just as much as the antiGerman war has been curtailed by Russia’s long, grim fight against Hitler. In spite of recent United States successes, the sea and air approaches to Japan from the north-east, from the east and from the far south are well buttressed, and offer difficult strategic problems. Good progress is being made there. But if Russia were to turn her armies eastward into Siberia after the German surrender, and were to strike at Japan from the north and from the west, Hirohito’s empire would be hard beset, and the Japanese would have to shift such a large proportion of their forces northward that they might be forced to abandon all their conquests south of the Philippines and Indo-China. New 3000-mile Battlcfront

To most careless armchair strategists the main value to the United Nations of Soviet participation in the war against Japan is assumed to be the fact that Allied bombers could then use the Russian airfields around Vladivostok as bases from which to bomb Tokio and other Japanese cities which lie within a range of from 600 to 850 miles. Actually the opening of a new land front on the mainland of Asia would be a worse blow for Japan than merely bringing her cities within the range of bombers. If Russia and Japan go to war there will automatically be developed a new land front more than 3000 miles in length, stretching from Northern Korea clear around Manchuria, and off into the deserts where Outer Mongolia adjoins Japanese-occupied Jehol, Chahar, and Suiyuan provinces in North China. Maintenance of such a front, added to the 2000 miles of active front already existing in China proper, would put an unendurable strain upon Japan’s military, supply, and man-power resources, and her relatively early defeat then would be even more assured than the defeat of Germany seems to be today. As viewed from Tokio, the complex system of railways and highways which Japan has built since her incursion into Manchuria (now Manchukuo) radiates menacingly toward the inner circle of the vital Russian-owned Trans-Siberian railway, and makes that indispensable supply line vulnerable all the way from inland Chita to Khabarovsk and on to Vladivostok on the sea coast. But the Russians have been equally busy in this area for the last 12 years, and have completed their own strategic rail' and highway systems. Menace to Industries If Russia has decided to fight Japan, China will eventually receive greatlyincreased shipments of war necessities, and it is possible that in the hidden •heart of Northern Asia railway double tracking and highway widening is already under way in preparation for the unknown hour when Russia will strike. The greatest perils to Japan of possible Russian participation in the war in Asia would be not only aerial bombings of her home cities, but the even greater threat of bombings and several attempts at invasion of Manchukuo and Korea. Without Manchukuo and the great industries she has created there since 1931, Japan would have been unable to fight this war on the scale she has maintained since Pearl Harbour. If Manchukuo is invaded, or its production impaired by aerial assaults, the whole Japanese war effort will be in grave danger. The might of the assault which could be thrown against Japan if Russia abandons neutrality is almost incalculable. Not onlv would there be the Russians themselves, but their air force could be vastly augmented by easy flights of American planes and supplies sent over the Alaska-Aleutians route, and in addition the Soviet has enough small, swift naval craft and submarines based around Vladivostok to be of great nuisance value against Janan’s navy and transports. A decision by Stalin would be one of the momentous events of the war.