STRONG PROTEST BY MR. CURTIN

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 105, 28 January 1943, Page 5

STRONG PROTEST BY MR. CURTIN

Holding Strategy In Pacific (By Telegraph.—l’rese Assn.-— Copyright.) (Special Australian Correspondent.) CANBERRA, January 26. A strong protest against the relegation by the United Nations strategy of tlie South-West Pacific to a holding war was made by the Prime Minister, Mr. Curtin, in n broadcast tonight to the people of Australia and tbe United States on the occasion of Australia Day. The South-West Pacific, he said, was too crucial to be left to a force of caretakers, and a holding war policy meant that Japan was buying cheaply the time she required to exploit Iler new resources for an onslaught which the United Nations would Hud costly to fight. , . Mr. Curtin outlined the part the Australian forces have taken on sea and hind and in the air and the sacrifices that have been made by her eons, and said: “I would hesitate to delineate what has been done but for the tact that it is necessary to show that, we are far from being helpless and inefficient moaners in the face of the enemy. We have paid a price for our seal of nationhood. We have paid it cheerfully as a free people in a free cause, and we will go on paying it, but it is also the charier of our right to share in the common pool ot Allied resources. “Obscure Afterwards.’

“In point of strategy, the preservation of Austral!;! is vital to the United Nations. for the earlier the attack against the heart of Japan the less costly anil the more decisive the result will be. "I put it to the American people. The men of Corregidor can be avenged only if the naval and air strength, in tins theatre is adequate to the plans of the commander. Any other conception ot strategy involves the Pacific becoming a defensive front till the United Nations have achieved victory everywhere except against Japan. "Neither Air. Churchill nor Mr. Roosevelt has placed a lime limit ou the war against Hitler. Whatever that period may be, and however long it may be. it. will be a period during which Japan can build to a strength' that may well make her im-

pregnable. "Mr. Churchill and Air. Roosevelt know the Australian viewpoint; it is no insular submission. Just as we agreeil from the very moment Hitler struck at world freedom in 1.939 that we must contribute our share m global war, so we sav that global war involves the southwest Pacific theatre as an integral part of the total conflict. ’lt cannot be left to an obscure afterwards. "Greater air and naval strength to support the forces now fighting would have an immediate and significant impact on the Japanese plans and would enable co-ordination of Allied lighting power to be brought to bear at places and in point of time where their striking power could well be decisive."