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Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 March 1942, Page 3

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OF BATTLE IN PACIFIC DEVELOPMENT OF ALLIED OFFENSIVE. VIEWS OF CHUNGKING SPOKESMAN. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, March 10. ihe next phase of the Battle of the Pacific will be to build up an offensive against Japan, first in Australia and then in northern Burma, eastern India and southwest China, said the Chinese Army spokesman in Chungking today. “These areas,” he said, “should be held not merely for defensive action but for developing powerful attacks upon the enemy-occupied territory so as to render Japan’s position untenable.” The “New York Sun,” in an editorial today, says: “If the defence of Australia is to be a race against time, the Japanese have not been laggard in getting off their mark. The logic of geography indicates that if the United Nations are to make any successful counter-attack upon the Japanese the northern coast of Australia affords the most promising bases from which to launch it. “With the Japanese already in possession of bases in Timor, in the-north-west, and New Guinea, in the north-east, such an attack might conceivably be blanketed before it got started. Even more to the point is the fact that Timor and New Guinea offer excellent stepping-stones and jumping-off places for a Japanese invasion of Australia.”