AUSTRALIAN FORCES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25737, 8 January 1945, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN FORCES

DEMAND FOR PUBLICITY HINT OF IMPORTANT MOVES (N.Z.P.A. Special Aust. Correspondent) (Rec. 7 p.m.) SYDNEY, Jan. 7. Australians are agitating for greater publicity for their fighting men in the Pacific war. Renewed demands are being made for the issue .of a supplementary communique covering the activities of the Australian military forces. The lack of such publicity, it is claimed, is leading to serious misunderstandings in the United States. The demand follows a statement made in New York by Mr P. C. Spender, M.H.R., a member of the Australian. War Council and a former Army Minister, that General MacArthur’s communiques have not publicised adequately the activities of the Australian forces under his command. Mr Spender gave this as a main reason why many Americans believe that Aus--tralia is slacking in the war against Japan. v . Sizeable Operations “Australian military forces at this moment are engaged in sizeable and important operations north of Australia,” said Mr Spender in an interview in New York. “But nothing seems to be known in the United States, nor is, any word seemingly permitted to come through about any of this. Indeed. I do not think any communique has ever been issued about the current operations of Australian troops in the area just north of Australia.”

The important part to be played by Australian forces in the next phase of the Pacific war must remain a secret for the present, said the Acting Prime Minister, Mr F. M. Forde, replying to Mr Spender. The Japanese, however, would learn the answer shortly.

Mr Forde explained that the rol# of the. Australian forces in the Pacific was determined by General MacArthur after consultation with the Federal Government. General MacArthur on many occasions had paid a generous tribute to the Australian forces under his command. It had already been stated* officially that the Commonwealth’s land and air forces would be heavily committed m the task of exterminating the Japanese bypassed in New Guinea and the Solomons (estimated to number 90,000) and that they would also play a part in the operations in the Philippines. - Full publicity would be given to their activities at the proper time. The newspapers here have been unanimous in seeking wider publicity for Australia’s military forces and the tasks on which those forces may be engaged, but their requests for special Australian communiques were recently rejected by the War Cabinet. Due Recogriition Denied

‘'The mystery story of 1944—the role of the Australian Army in the Pacific war—is being continued into. 1945,” writes the military correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald. “The public is uneasily wondering whether past history is to be repeated to a point where, as in Greece and New Guinea, publicity muddles will rob the Australian fighting man of much of the honour that his valour is winning. Only long after the event was it made clear in official announcements that Australia had provided the overwhelming majority of the combat troops who broke the Japanese hold on New Guinea. It was last September that Mr Forde revealed that the several New Guinea campaigns had involved the use of the equivalent of 10 divisions of Australian troops. “The position which now threatens to arise,” the correspondent says, “is that Australian troops may soon be carrying out important engagements in New Guinea and elsewhere without prompt or adequate recognition in General MacArthur’s communiques, not because he desires that result, but because the communiques are written at his Philippine, headquarters, where everyone is naturally preoccupied with the immediate job on hand. Separate Australian communiques are thus urgently needed. Otherwise, there is danger of a repetition of the earlier lag in the news of Australian military activity which leads critics overseas, particularly the American isolationists, to assert that Australia is ‘an absent ally ’ in the Pacific war.” Indicating that Australian offensive moves in the Pacific are getting under way, an R.A.A.F. spokesman to-day revealed that with only one exception all Australia’s fighter aces are now on operational service in the South-west Pacific.