A CERTAINTY?

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 173, 24 July 1942, Page 4

A CERTAINTY?

ATTACK ON RUSSIA

MOVE BY JAPANESE

(0.C.) SAN FRANCISCO, May 21

A man of many and varied distinctions is Major George FieldingEliot, "who was a visitor to California to-day. He has a worldwide reputation, and spent April to November in 1915 at Gallipoli and trod the bloody fields of the Somme and of Passchendaele. War is something more than a lot of coloured pins on a map to him. Then, too, he speaks up.

I should say that one of the few out-and-out definite certainties is that Japan will attack Russia," he said. Everybody seems to think that he is an Australian, simply because he attended Melbourne University and fought for four years under a widebrimmed Aussie hat. Despite his emphatic Australian lingo, however, he is an American.

11l answer questions on anything,' he says,, "except the attitude of the American people. What do I know about their attitude? I think the American people are all right. That s all I know about them—and that s enough."

ini"^i'? e - war '" as ked, reflectively. well, it is going just about according to Hoyle. The big push by Hitler will be in South Russia. It may be accompanied by a drive through Turkey. I think the Turks will fight, particularly if the Russians show any signs of slowing Hitler down."

What is Washington's attitude? ' Perhaps at the beginning Washington thought of this as a war in whicn Hitler was the main objective and anything the Japanese did was just a sideshow," he said, "but now they realise that this is a world war and we will have to fight it wherever it breaks out —and that means the Pacific as well as the Atlantic."

The Battle of the Coral Sea? "A very nice victory." said the major, "but if anybody thinks we sank the Japanese Navy, they are in for a rude awakening. We caught a Japanese task force and handed them a fine beating—and that is about all there is to it."