VIGOROUS ACTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 May 1942, Page 4

VIGOROUS ACTION

DEMANDED IN DEFENCE OF AUSTRALIA DR. EVATT BROADCASTS IN BRITAIN. ESSENTIAL PRELIMINARY TO OFFENSIVE. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 12.20 p.m.) RUGBY, May 17. An appeal for a realisation of the danger facing Australia was broadcast by the Australian Minister of External Affairs (Dr. Evatt). He said a heavy score of disasters was on the board. “This must be stopped,” he continued. “If we lose more, we may lose all.” In the past, Dr. Evatt said, Australians had helped to save Britain, and Britain, by winning the air battle of 1940, had saved Australia. At the moment the Japanese were in possession of vital strategic points in and near New Guinea and these were as much a gateway to Australia as Calais, Dunkirk and Boulogne were to Britain. He considered that the Japanese move to invade Australia, which had been repulsed recently, would be renewed in greater strength. Under the present war organisation, Britain and the United States jointly controlled the flow of supplies to Australia and every other theatre. Only they, and they acting together, could allocate the aid needed. He was sure they would do it,'for the defence of Australian bases was of crucial importance. Only if those bases were secure could they pass to the offensive against the Japanese. Australia asked that the Pacific front be regarded as of first-rate importance. He had been sent to Britain and the United States to confer with Mr Churchill and his colleagues on the immediate peril facing Australia. Everything he had seen made him certain that the British nation could not be beaten. Both Government and people in Britain were resolved that the enemy now threatening the British in Australia and New Zealand should be forced back and then overthrown.