The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun FRIDAY, MAY 22, 1942. U.S. COMMANDER ARRIVES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 119, 22 May 1942, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun FRIDAY, MAY 22, 1942. U.S. COMMANDER ARRIVES

ZEALANDERS arc not unacciuainted with war, but we find it hard tn accustom ourselves to the idea of war in the Pacific. In our brief tradition war has been something that happened far away, in Europe, and, more than anything else, it has meant fighting on land. Until December 7 last this war also was far away, and the greatest danger we thought about, was that of a hit-and-run raid by an enemy cruiser. But now all that is changed. We face a new enemy, who for the time being has on his side that which we have hitherto always had on ours—sea power. With sea power and its complementary air power he has made prodigious advances in a short time, and he is preparing for others. No land in the Pacific is secure, or can be secure, until his power is smashed. Who will smash it, and how? With the Royal Navy fully employed on multifarious, urgent and dangerous duties elsewhere, Japanese sea and air power can be broken down only by the other great Pacific Power, the United States, and by the United States only when* her strength, incomparably greater than any other, can be brought to bear. The time needed for that may be long, or short—we cannot tell— but what we in New Zealand and Australia do know, and we take great comfort from the knowledge, is that because of American strength, increasingly greater and increasingly übiquitous, in the Pacific, the war prospect in these parts is already slowly changing, and we hope that eventually it will change quickly and, for Japan, disastrously.

It Is with this knowledge and in this hope that New Zealanders, wherever they have the opportunity, will welcome Vice-Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, who has been appointed to supreme command in the South Pacific area. The exact boundaries of that command have not been announced, and the forces which Admiral Ghormley disposes will necessarily remain secret; but the fact that an officer of such rank, and with so distinguished a record has been chosen is gratifying because of its implications. The war has made many strange changes, and not the least of them is that by which a United States admiral takes command of sea, land and air forces in an area in which American territorial possessions are small and unimportant. That will provide—is already providing —the Axis commentators with material for many a gibe, but in these countries the gibes will have no point. Of no other of the United Nations can It he said that there exists between it and us so close an identity of views and aspirations. The war has brought us into a closer association with the United States which we have long desired, and we enter it with confidence, and the hope that it will endure in peace.