Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1942. ACTION IN THE PACIFIC.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 January 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1942. ACTION IN THE PACIFIC.

—. —* an immediate view, there may appear to be some justification lor the outcry raised in the London Press on the subject of Singapore and for the note of urgency with which some of the British newspapers arc declaring that this all-important bastion of Pacific defence must not fall. In their land operations the Japanese have nOw occupied a very large part of the Malax- Peninsula and they have a numerical air superiority, though one that is far from being uncontested.

hi. addition the enemy, in his occupation of at least the coastal regions of Sarawak and in his attacks on Dutch Borneo and Celebes, is striking south towards the Straits of Sunda, on the direct approach to Singapore from the Indian Ocean. Unless the .Japanese can be checked in these encircling operations it may not be easy to give, or to carry into effect, the immediate assurance demanded by the London “Daily Mail” that General AVavell xvill be given adequate reinforcements of troops, ships, and above all of planes.

,Criticism of the Allied strategy has come also from the Chinese Press, which is said bitterly to resent the refusal of the offer by General Chiang Kai-shek to send Chinese troops into Malaya. It is hardly possible, in the existing state of information, to determine what these British and Chinese criticisms are worth, but it has to be remembered that in Canada very recently Mr Churchill declared his confident belief that Singapore could be held and that within the last few days General Wavell’s Chief of Staff (Sir Henry Pownall) has stated that the Allies are absolutely determined to defend the great Far Eastern base. The Australian Navy Minister (Mr iMakin) too. has spoken with restrained but apparently firm confidence of the Allied concentrations of power in the Pacific.

It certainly must be hoped that no difference of opinion has arisen between Chiang Kai-shek and Britain in regard to the introduction of Chinese troops into Malaya. China obviously is capable of making a very important contribution, in the present critical phase and later, to the total Allied Avar effort in the Pacific. In Hunan and elsewhere the Chinese are striking particularly effective and damaging Ijloavs at Japan, So far as the threat to Singapore is concerned, it has to be considered that Chinese troops may be able to give better aid in Burma, where they have already reinforced the British and Imperial garrison, than in the Malay Peninsula.

The admitted difficulties under which the Allies meantime are labouring, chiefly on account of the impossibility of at once transferring adequate naval and air forces to the South-Western Pacific, would be modified very considerably if Russia were added to the list of Japan’s active enemies. Following on some suggestive diplomatic meetings and talks in Washington, a New York “Herald-Tribune” correspondent has stated that most diplomatists expect an outbreak of Russo-Japanese hostilities in the spring’. In a message received on Monday, however, the Soviet Army newspaper “Red Star” was quoted as declaring that “the hour is not far distant when the Siberian Army will be called upon to deal a new and crushing blow against the Fascist hordes.” Apart from any development, of land fighting on the Siberian-lVTanchukuo frontiers, the effective use by the Allies of aerodromes in Siberia from which to bomb Japanese naval, military and air bases and centres of war production obviously might be expected to change, profoundly the whole outlook in the Pacific. A great deal may depend upon the extent Io which preparations for this development, have been advanced.