GREAT ISSUES

Waikato Times, Volume 194, Issue 22353, 20 May 1944, Page 5

GREAT ISSUES

IMPERIAL CONFERENCE LIKELY TREND OF WAR DIRE FUTURE FOR JAPAN (Official Wireless) (Received May 20, 2.15 p.m.) RUGBY, May 19 Field-Marshal Smuts, speakin\ on receiving the Freedom of Birmingham, said he had attended many Imperial conferences in the last 30 or 40 years but could recall none comparing with the latest Prime Ministers’ conference in the magnitude of the issues raised or the spirit of mutual understanding which prevailed throughout. “We found our minds travelling in the direction of the same grand objectives, both war and peace,” he said. “Essentially there is nothing left to differ about.

“I do not think our Commonwealth has ever been in better shape than today. It is an answer to the pessimists. This greatest political group that ever existed is not due to some mystic, secret possession, some exclusive technique of which the rest of the world is deprived or is ignorant. On the contrary it is founded cn what is common to all of us, on that common, decent human nature we all share.”

Assault Already Begun Field-Marshal Smuts said the assault on Hitler’s fortress in the west, which was really the third front, had already begun in the biggest air attack in history. The issue of the great Battle of Europe might not be decided by this front or either of the other two, but by all three combined. It would be a triangular attack which would end Nazidom. There might be checks and setbacks, pauses here and there without upsetting the triangular operations as a whole, which would remorselessly roll on in until nothing remained of Hitler’s fortress. M The attack will be a co-ordinated one in which all three will have an important role to play. The Mediterranean front, which has already achieved such far-reaching results culminating in the knock-out of Italy, may again prove pregnant for the final. General Alexander’s battle for Rome, already so brilliantly begun, should therefore be carefully watched.” Japanese May Be Cut Off Field-Marshal Smuts said he was # inclined to be more optimistic than many others about the duration of the Japanese war after Hitler was finished. The Japanese bases, the British and Dutch possessions, and the island chain north of Australia might all be by-passed from the Carolines and Marianas, now under attack, to the Philippines. The anese forces if thus cut off must wither like a branch cut from a tree and must surrender or perish. Nearer home Japan would then be forced to face the combined British and American air and naval fleets, with results that anyone could foresee. After the destruction of her navy she might see herself forced to surrender or starve and burn, to death. It was a terrible prospect • for a hundred million people. The understanding and co-opera-tion between the United States and the British Commonwealth was perhaps the most promising and lasting development of this war, /aid FieldMarshal Smuts. It might yet prove the turning poiitf of history and become the most valuable force behind the new world organisation and \yorld progress generally. But it must not exclude the collaboration of Russia, whose phenomenal rise need not frighten the world. She had her part to play in the new comity of nations.