ATTACK OR DEFENCE

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 245, 17 October 1942, Page 5

ATTACK OR DEFENCE

POSSIBILITIES DISCUSSED OFFICERS AND THE COLOUR LINE.

P.A. Cable.

LONDON, Oct. 15.

At any time now the eastern defences of India may become a major issue in the war, says The Times correspondent in India. Doubtless detailed Allied plans are ready for the reoccupation of Burma. Military observers believe that the Japanese have suffer ed too many hard blows in the Pacific, especially in the loss of aircraft-carriers, to undertake a sea-borne offensive against Ceylon or southern India. There is no relaxation of military vigilance, but if the Japanese do come there will need to be a change of heart, not only among the Indian community. The Madras Club's great preoccupation at present is its insistence on the right, which the military commander himself is challenging, to exclude Indian officers from the temporary privileges extended to British officers. It is believed that fully a third of the Japanese forces in Burma are stricken with malaria. Nevertheless they are in greater strength than is generally supposed, and recently there has been a great increase in Japanese fighter-plane strength. The main enemy forces are apparently based on the Irrawaddy. The most likely Japanese plan of advance would be a series of bounds along the coastal belt from Akyab to Chittagong. Considerable Chinese reinforcements are conceqtrating on the Yunnan border. British reinforcements have poured into India and strategical areas have been occupied and fortified, while the training and equipping of over a million Indian reeruits has been accelerated in a manner few thought possible, largely as a result of the diversion of material from the Far East. Because of communication difflculties it is believed that the Burma Road would represent the limit of an Allied advance from the north. Other Allied offensive activities would be a matter for combined operations against Rangoon and Akyab.