BRITAIN’S PLEDGE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 276, 22 November 1943, Page 3

BRITAIN’S PLEDGE

WAR AGAINST JAPAN FULL WEIGHT ASSURED (P.A.) Auckland, Nov. 21. An assurance that, despite any warweariness they might then feel, the British people would honour their pledge to throw their full weight Japan once Germany was conquered, was given on Saturday by members of the group of British newspaper proprietors now touring New Zealand. Sir Walter Layton, leader of the party, saia the Pacific mission led by Major-General Lethbridge, who recently visited New Zealand, was the answer to any questions whether Britain regarded the Pacific theatre with any less determination than it had shown in the fighting against Germany.

’ Britain has given her pledge to throw her full weight into the Pacific and the Far East at the first opportunity/’ said 'Mr. Samuel Storey, M.P. Another member of the party. Sir Walter Layton, who retired last May from the office of chief adviser on programmes and planning in the Ministry of Supply, said Britain began many months ago to plan two types of weapons which the major war in the Pacific demanded. Factories were already being transferred from production for the Japanese war. Discussing the forms of aid which Britain would give in the operations against Japan, Sir Walter said it had yet to be shown Whether armies of the continental size would be needed, but whatever was required to help bring the war to as rapid a conclusion as possible would be sent. This included aircraft and ships. The third member of the party, Sir Neville Pearson, chairman of the iamous publishing house of C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd., said Britain was vitally concerning herself already with the logistics of a full-scale offensive against Japan. She was studying and preparing for the transport, quartering and supplying of the huge forces which she would employ. By thus preparing for her part in the Pacific battleground she was taking measures by which the war against Japan would be more quickly ended. The best possible guarantee that these measures were being taken was Major-General Lethbridge’s mission. Sir Neville, who served in the Royal Field Artillery in the last war and in an anti-aircraft unit in this war, also mentioned the question of a second front. Britain, he said, was alive with soldiers trained for the one purpose, of invading Europe, wherever strategical considerations demanded that they should enter the Continent, whether it was on the French coast or through the Balkans. Everyone in Britain had seen for several years regular short-range daylight strafing of German positions across the English Channel. Everyone knew that almost every square inch of ground in the British Isles was crammed with troops, and everyone had seen largescale daylight exercises which these troops had carried out in the English Channel. Everyone knew, he said, that there had been no general movement of these troops into the Mediterranean. and that while there had been more troops in Britain before the opening of the recent Mediterranean operations, only the numbers under arms then had ever exceeded the number under arms now.