THREAT TO INDIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 February 1942, Page 3

THREAT TO INDIA

JAPANESE WESTWARD ADVANCE NEED OF ENDING POLITICAL DIVISIONS. NEW BRITISH MOVE SUGGESTED. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, February 26. “The Times” stresses the importance to India of the campaign in Burma, and urges the need of unity in India in face of the common danger of a possible Japanese onslaught, success of which would be a death-blow to the .culture of one of the great civilisations of the world. “That the Japanese invasion of Burma and the steady westward advance of Japanese sea-power and airpower threaten India is only too clear, and that threat makes an early solution, however provisional, of the Indian political problem imperative,” the newspaper states. “The Indian Army has done nobly in many campaigns. But there still persists a marked, indeed, a tragic, division between the two chief Indian parties and between them and the British Government as to the methods by which full Indian co-operation can be secured in the field of politics and of production for total war. The purpose —the achievement of full self-govern-ment in India —is common to the British and Indian peoples. The Indian war effort has been impressive, but no one can doubt that it would have attained far larger dimensions if official and public attention in India had not been occupied with the country’s political future. “It is time and more than time, for a new British move, which was foreshadowed again by Sir Stafford Cripps in the House of Commons yesterday, to dissipate the suspicions and meet the Japanese advance by the formation of a common Indo-British and HinduMoslem front against common danger.” A message from Chungking says that Marshal Chiang Kai-shek is personally arranging for a strong diplomatic mission to be sent to India with a view to the establishment of the closest Indo-Chinese relations. It is announced in New Delhi that the headquarters of the Government of India will remain there, in view of the increasing threat to India, and will not move to Simla as is customary during the hot weather.