THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1949. DEFENCELESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27078, 12 May 1949, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1949. DEFENCELESS

It was a pathetic and more than slightly ridiculous plea which Mr H. E. Combs made at a luncheon at Washington, given by the important Congressional policy-making committees of the House and the Senate. “While you are making your North Atlantic Treaty,” he exhorted, “please do not forget about us”; and he strengthened his supplications with the assurance that “We will meet you more than halfway if you make an overture to us in that direction.” Mr Combs is not, of course, to blame for the fact that the New Zealand Government has foolishly and incr.edibly neglected the main requirement of Pacific security planning, which is the integration of Pacific., defensive organisations with' that of the United States. Still less is he to blame for the equally incomprehensible dilatoriness of the Government of Australia in recognising that the only real strength the two southernmost nations of the British Commonwealth could have in the event of a conflagration in the Pacific must derive from a close alliance with the United States. He was merely voicing an appeal for American cooperation in Pacific measures which should have been made three years and more ago, when United States forces were strongly established iff the great Pacific basin; and which should have been made by the Australian/ and N§w Zealand Governments and urged vigorously and constantly through their elaborate diplomatic establishments in Washington. The time for that appeal still exists, for the simple reason that unless the United States is prepared to offer Australia and New Zealand -a measure of co-operation in Pacific defence planning .these two countries must be ready victims of any predatory. Power.: But it is late in the day'to utter it; and fatuousness could scarcely be further stretched than in the statement that New Zealand would meet America “more than halfway ” 'if an approach for a Pacific alliance was made. While Australia and New Zealand have been more or less happily toying with the whole problem of. defence, the United States has concentrated its planning upon the immediately inflammatory situation in Europe. The retreat by the United States from the outer perimeter of its wartime Pacific establishments might have been prevented even a year ago. "But now a withdrawal upon a defence, line running through the Marianas to Okinawa, Japan and Alaska is virtually complete. To meet America “ more than halfway” in any practical integrated defensive system, New Zealand would need to advance her frontiers almost to within artillery range of the West Coast of the United States! This is a project which Mr Combs was presumably not promising New Zealand would carry out.# There‘remains, then, the necessity for Australia and New Zealand to endeavour to save what can be saved, and to embark upon a vigorous defence policy that may persuade a reluctant United States Congress, and the United States naval authorities in particular,, that our two British outposts have the will and the capacity to do their part in reorganising the disintegrated Pacific security structure. Australia has taken a step forward, in offering to integrate her defences with those of the United States. The gesture is almost hopelessly tardy and inadequate, especially after the Commonwealth had / insisted in effect in denying to the United States the use of Manus, where a powerful American base now lies in decay. Yet it is recognition at last that in the Pacific the interests of America and Australia are not so much parallel as over-lapping. When the Australian decision was referred to Mr Nash, as Acting Prime Minister of New Zealand, he was sufficiently candid to admit that no communication of a like nature between the United States and this country had taken place. This means simply that, apart from some problematical planning in the South Pacific Zone, New Zealand is without allies or defence plans. Yet even the New Zealand Government cannot pretend that the Pacific presents a pleasing picture of idyllic peacefulness. Each morning’s cable news declares the contrary. New Zealand’s most effective defences to-day are time and distance—and the hope that there will be no war in the Pacific.