PACIFIC FRONT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20875, 29 August 1942, Page 3

PACIFIC FRONT

ALLIES HOLD LINES SMALL AMERICAN FORCES U.S. PRESSMAN’S ANALYSIS (10.30 a.m.) NEW YORK, Aug. 28. “•The Pacific situation is satisfactory in view of all the facts,” declares Mr. Joseph Harsch, the Christian Science Monitor correspondent, who recently returned from covering the war in the south-west Pacific. The front was being held with not very substantial American assistance. The Allies were a long way from beating Japan, however, and still faced with a desperate fight until America was able to divert her major offensive strength to the Pacific, but we had retained our main positions and_ had resisted enemy attempts to cut "communications and seize lines of re-entry. The Japanese had not succeeded in shaking the Allied strategy of concentrating on Hitler while holding Japan. Mr. Harsch’s chief reason for finding the Pacific situation satisfactory is that the Japanese have not been allowed to advance beyond the lines established by American military councils years ago. He reveals that before the attack on Pearl Harbour, British, American and Canadian forces were being moved in the Pacific into a buffer area between the American and Japanese spheres, but the enemy moved too quickly to permit the completion of the plan and seized the Philippines after a resistance almost exactly equal to Washington’s anticipations. Easy Fall Unexpected “The American leaders did not, however, expect the easy fall of Malaya and Singapore,” he says, “but London after the war may reveal that it anticipated these losses and had intended to withdraw the Malayan army from Singapore to defend Burma. The final disastrous attempt to defend Singapore cost 100,000 men and may turn out to be an improvisation forced on London by the Australian Government.” t Mr. Harsch believes that Java might have been held with 200 good fighters and 150 first-class bombers, but the Dutch possessed only a few obsolete .planes purchased before the outbreak of the European war. They did not receive any lease-or-lend planes from America. These began to arrive in Australia only after the fall of Java. Mr. Harsch says the loss of Burma was not a vital blow to the Allies since Burma forms part of no-man’s-land outside the vital Allied bastions. Mr. Harsch also sets out the full facts of restricted American assistance in the south-west Pacific theatre. He confesses to a sense of guilt that his despatches, like those of other American correspondents, emphasised the cheerful aspects of the war in the Pacific, and says he has now offered real facts by way of atonement. America, he says, is following the master strategy of concentrating her efforts on Europe. The forces available for the Pacific were extremely small for what they had to accomplish. Considering this, the success achieved had been magnificent.