CRUCIAL BATTLE PENDING

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 241, 13 October 1942, Page 5

CRUCIAL BATTLE PENDING

JAPANESE LANDING S ON SOLOMONS.

P.A. Special.

SYDNEY, Oct. 12.

American naval experts believe that the most crucial land battle in the Pacific since the fall of the Indies and Malaya is shaping in the Solomons. They explain that Japan's determination to reinforce her troops on Guadalcanar, regardless of losses, shows that she hopes to concentrate sufficient ground forces to march down the island against the American air --field. The Washington United Press correspondent says that Japanese landings are taking place on the same side of the mountains as that on which the American positions are established, therefore the Japanese are probably considering a southward push through a series of pincer actions. Naval observers, who emphasise the importance of the south-east Solomons in protecting Allied supply routes to Australia and New Zealand, do not attempt to minimise the blow to our Pacific strategic position should the Japanese push succeed. Mr Joseph Harsch, until recently the Christian Science Monitors war correspondent in the South-west Pacific, declares that the American operations in the Solomons were distorted during the early phases, and the public was led to believe that this was a great counter- attack to sweep the Japanese back through. the Indies and the Philippines. He says that reliable sources declare that the Marines cannot

hold out indefmitely miless they are substantially reinforced quickly. The Sydney Herald's war correspondent, who recently visited Guadalcanar, says that large United States reinforcements have arrived there, considerably easing the position, which more than onee in the past seven weeks has been "touch and go."