MANOEUVRING INTO POSITION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 147, 27 August 1941, Page 4

MANOEUVRING INTO POSITION

SCARCELY had the ringing message from the Hon. Winston Churchill to the peoples of the Empire, America and the enslaved countries of Europe ceased, than world attention was further arrested by the Allied move into Iran. The occupation of ancient Persia was obviously to forestall a similar movement which was under contemplation by the Nazis. At long last Britain has learnt to play the game as the Nazis know it, meeting desperate act with desperate act, guile with guile' and aggression with aggression—but with this difference ; occupations by British troops are but temporary expedients in the great game which is being played to master and overcome the forces of enslavement and terror. German occupation on the other hand spells permanent servility to the unhappy conquered races by the Teuton bully who prides himself on his fitness to rule the world and regards all other nations as his inferiors. But Britain is fast breaking away from the chains of orthodoxy as far as waging war is concerned. "One_ by one," says our great leader, "the Nazis have succeeded in overthrowing their victims — whether it be by open warfare, invasion, occupation, by treachery or by flagrant corruption. In the past all have succumbed before the triumphal progress of the German armies! There is only one way to meet such methods and that is by playing the same game and: forestalling the obvious moves. Thus the occupation of Iceland, strategical parts of Greenland,, of Syria and finally of Iran. The inevitable clash on a major scale between British and German armies has yet to take place ; the manoeuvring into striking positions has begun. As the ties with America grow stronger and stronger, the British notes to Japan become more and more premptory and explicit. Japan's appetite must be disciplined and her lust for territory curbed. Churchill's warning to the Nipponese militarists was no idle one. The conversations with President Roosevelt were no doubt directed in a large degree towards the cohesive action against the growing greed of the peoples of the Rising Sun. In the East the armies of Empire are already standing to action, stations. Singapore is a bristling fortress, Borneo and the Malay States are heavily garrisioned, Burma is on the alert and the Phillipines are full of U.S.A. and patriot troops. One move into Thyland (Siam) by the Japs is sufficient to start, a far Eastern conflagration, which will make the wearying 'China incident' assume its true perspective. In plain words Japan's bluff has been called and it remains for her own head-strong army chiefs to decide the issue. Back on the Russian steppes the thousand-mile front of battle goes slowly in favour of the Nazis, yet it is amazing to read of the 600,000 Russian troops who have been spared for the occupation of Persia. The juggling for position goes on and we in Whakatane watch breathlessly as the great game of fate progresses and each mammoth movement succeeds the other, —now to our advantage, now to the enemy's. But underlying it all we still retain the unquenchable faith and confidence that victory whatever the cost must assuredly be ours in the final and greatest clash.