ACTION IN PACIFIC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 July 1942, Page 3

ACTION IN PACIFIC

ADVOCATED BV DR. EVATT NEED OF FORESTALLING JAPAN. DANGER IN LETTING STALEMATE CONTINUE. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) MELBOURNE, July 13. “I am convinced that if we do not move shortly toward the offensive Japan will,” said Dr. Evatt, Minister of External Affairs, in a speech. “We must not be misled into any sense of false security in the Pacific,” he said. “The task of conquering Japan has hardly commenced. There is grave danger in thinking that the Japanese are being held at bay and that that is enough. “The Japanese will never stay still. When they seem to be quiescent they are only gathering strength for another spring. “It is suicidal to encourage any feeling of over-confidence or complacency. Till we are able to attack Japan we must be prepared to be attacked by Japan at almost any port of the Pacific. “Undoubtedly the position in Australia has greatly improved during the last few months. The danger is that we will be misled by this improvement into supposing that stalemate in the Pacific is satisfactory.”

PUBLICATION OF FACTS CONDITION OF EFFECTIVE WAR EFFORT. SPEECH BY MR W. M. HUGHES. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 9.45 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. Pointing out the urgent necessity in Australia of perfecting preparations for war, Mr W. M. Hughes, in a speech at the Millions Club, declared that unless Japan was stopped by a superior military force, nothing was more certain than that she would attempt a major invasion of this country. Victory in the war, whidh was a people’s war, depended upon the public being kept as well-informed as safety permitted, through normal channels of publicity—primarily the Press, Mr Hughes added. If the people came to think the facts were being kept from them, and that they were being enlightened only by official “handouts,” their morale, upon which everything depended, would become sickened. The maintenance of a well-inform-ed public opinion must depend, in the main, on the continuance of a free Press, which was not subject to coercion in its publication of facts and was independent of Government pressure in its expression of opinion. He had lately noticed tendencies in Australia which suggested that in some quarters little value was being set upon these considerations. The censorship must be used to withhold rigidly from publication every fact a knowledge of which would be of value and comfort to the enemy, but subject only to that the public were entitled to all the facts and to a free hand in arguing about what the facts meant and where they would lead us.