FADING THREAT OF INVASION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 43, 29 January 1943, Page 4

FADING THREAT OF INVASION

NEW Zealanders having lived for a twelve-month under the constant fear of invasion from the sea, would seem to have grown case-hardened to the possibility of such an event. To-day with the lifting of the blackout restrictions the relaxing of the travelling limitations and lessening oi the Army's persistent demand for men, the average New Zealander remains quite phlegmatic and unmoved. A peep behind the scenes of the Pacific war however reveals something of the reasons which have caused Japan iito loosen her grip in the south and to take new and serious stock of her sudden isolation. The year has been a black one for the: Axis powers and 1943 opens with each partner of the unholy alliance howling frantically for help from the other. Italy lone and desolated, Germany wasting her life blood and her substance in the Russian snows, and now Japan. The third member of the Axis is to-day suffering from the exhaustion incurred by her first frantic rush into the war. She is the nation in which New Zealanders have the most immediate interest, yet she too, appears to havfl had her claws well cut—so much so indeed that she must' perforce see her Papuan army annihilated and her Solo-' mons expedition shattered without daring to raise a hand in their interests. "The threat to New Zealand,"' said Major General Bell, at Ruatoki last Sunday, ''has bsen lifted." Why? Firstly because the Nipponese navy has been proved definitely inferior to the American; secondly because the beleaguered Japanese garrisons on both Guadalcanal Island in the Solomons and in New Guinea have been worsted, by men who have learnt the art of jungl© warfare even better than they themselves; and thirdly because of the growing threat to Burma, the Indies and the Malay, from Wavell's counter-offensive from India, These reasons are sufficient in themselves to arrest the reaching of the long: Japanese fingers Sn the South Pacific. They are. not however the complete picture. All is not well with the German armies in Russia. Hitler is en> treating the Japanese to create a diversionary action iri Siberia to relieve the awful pressure, exerted on his armies. China too is finding new strength in her American ait force wing, the pilots of which have proved more than <a match for the Zeros, hitherto an unchallenged terror to the Chinese peasantry and civilian population. Overshadowing everything else perhaps however is the gathering might of the U.S.A., the avowed purpose of which is the crush-? ing of the nation whose cunning treachery and doubledealing has constituted her a continual and growing threat to the peace of the Orient. Thus we can glimpse something of the Japanese dilemma, thus understand the startling news that Tojo proposes making a separate peace with China, and thus too can we comprehend the reason for abandonment, or at any rate the partial or temporary abandonment of any extension in the venture which wa3 boastfully proclaimed a year ago as the conquest of the South Pacific.