OPINION IN LONDON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 August 1942, Page 3

OPINION IN LONDON

OUTLOOK ENCOURAGING PROSPECT OF CAPTURING VALUABLE BASES. STRAIN ON JAPANESE RESOURCES (Special P.A. Correspondent.) LONDON, August 15. The battle in the Solomon Islands is regarded in London as being a limited operation of the highest importance. Victory—which is looked for with some confidence—would mean that the Americans could establish important airfields and bases which would be an insurance of the safety of Australia and New Zealand while being also a base for the start of a further attack against the Japanese in New Guinea, Java, and then the other

occupied territories. The “Manchester Guardian” in a leading article says: “It is possible that the Japanese, finding their hold round Tulagi endangered, will bring naval and air forces from their strongholds in the Caroline and Marshall islands to dispute the command of the sea. This first Allied offensive against Japan is greatly encouraging. Our task as soon as possible is to move against Japan simultaneously at the several vulnerable points which she offers.

“Except in a small area in the Solomons (and a still smaller one in New Guinea) she is not having to fight hard anywhere at present, but her military effort is distributed over distances which are so vast that she cannot easily transfer weight from one area to another. If we are to strain her resources till they crack we have to attack hex* in Burma, from India, in the Bay of Bengal, in China, and in the Aleutian Islands, and from the air in her home islands.

“The Tulagi operation may not be large in itself, but the moral of a clear-cut, unquestionable success in the Pacific would be everywhere understood as clearly as a similar success in Europe and Africa could we but gain it.”