CHINA’S STAND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 January 1942, Page 3

CHINA’S STAND

LOYAL COOPERATION ’ WITH ALLIES ANY DIVISION OF THE WAR DETRIMENTAL. REJOINDER TO COLONEL KNOX. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, January 21. The Chungking correspondent of the American United Press reports that Dr Wang Chung Hui, secretarygeneral of the Chinese Supreme National Defence Council, in an interview today said that any division of the war against the aggressors into two conflicts in Europe and Asia would be “detrimental to our common cause.” For China’s part, he continued, she could not honourably sign a separate peace with Japan. “Nor shall we,” he said, “for there can be no honourable peace with Japan apart from a general world settlement. China’s policy is one of complete co-ordination of fighting shoulder to shoulder- with the Allies against the Axis Powers.” This, says the correspondent, was the official reaction to the speech by the Secretary of the Navy, Colonel Knox, in Washington on January 12.

In his speech Colonel Knox said that an early clash between the American and Japanese navies was unlikely. He added: “The elements of distance and time, and the necessarily wide distribution of our naval forces, preclude an early conclusive • showdown with the Japanese navy, but I do not mean to imply that the Pacific fleet is idle. . . . The task of the British and American navies is the maintenance of an effective fighting strength in all the seas.” Colonel Knox stressed that the chief enemy was Germany, and said that as soon as Hitler’s Germany was destroyed the whole Axis fabric would collapse. FURTHER RETIREMENT IN MALAYA EAST COAST AREA. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.40 a.m.) RUGBY, January 22. Mention in this morning’s Singapore communique of enemy parties pushing south from Endau is taken in authoritative quarters in London to indicate that a further slight withdrawal on the east coast of Malaya has been made by the British forces, since the latest previous information had indicated that Endau was still in British hands. It is announced in London that among the regiments fighting in Malaya are the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the East Surreys and the Leicesters.