Late News

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 19, 17 October 1942, Page 8

Late News

GREAT PREPARATION IN INDIA Defence And Offence (Received October 17, 1.20 a.m.) LONDON, October 15. “At any time now the eastern defences of India may .become a major issue in the war,” says the India correspondent of “The Times.” “Doubtless detailed Allied plans are ready for the reoccupation of Burma. Military circles believe that the Japanese have suffered too many hard blows in the Pacific, specially in the loss of aircraft-carriers, to undertake a seaiborne offensive against Ceylon or South India.. There is no relaxation of military vigilance, but if the Japanese do come there will be need to be a change of heart not only among the Indian community. “In Madras the clubs’ great -preoccupation at present is in the insistence on their right, 'which the military commander himself in challenging, to exclude Indian officers from the temporary privileges which are extended to British officers. "Considerable Chinese reinforcements are concentrating on the Yunnan border. British 'reinforcements have been poured into India, the strategical areas have been occupied and fortified, and the training and equipping of over a million Indian recruits, accelerated in a manner that few thought possible, largely as a result of a diversion of material from the Bar East.”