AMERICAN VIEWS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1942, Page 3

AMERICAN VIEWS

ON WAR IN PACIFIC DEMANDS BY FORMER ISOLATIONISTS FOR HEAVY BOMBING ATTACKS ON JAPAN. FROM BASES IN CHINA. ■ (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 23. “The war in the Pacific faces- its biggest battles in 1943,” declares the well-informed Charles Hurd, of the Washington bureau of the “New York Times.” “Neither Japanese nor Americans have yet thrown into action such a fleet or such a number of planes as will certainly come to grips during the next year.’’ ' With the Japanese as yet on the defensive in only a small part of their vast holdings, American war observers are increasingly predicting fresh enemy moves on a grand scale. Mr Hurd says that attempts to land on the American Pacific coast or to repeat the attack on Pearl Harbour are entirely within the realms of possibility. It is certain, he declares, that Japan will make a major move in the Pacific which will inevitably lead to great battles by sea and air. Thus, a feeling is reported to be growing throughout the United States that America’s most pressing military task lies against Japan. The main support for the idea of concentration on the Pacific even at the expense of other fronts comes from the formerly isolationist Middle West. The advocates of this course are pressing strongly for the immediate dispatch io China of sufficient bombers “to blast _ every source of supply and communication, line that Japan is now maintaining with .such apparent freedom.” Congressman Harold Knutson (Republican, Minnesota) has called for the transfer 'to the Pacific of every American submarine that is now in the Atlantic and Mediterranean “to torpedo out of existence the now free sea-lanes by which Japan is replenishing her island bases.” The widely-syndicated columnist of the New York “Sun,” David Lawrence, also urges a greater flow of American ships, planes and men to the Pacific front, and writes, “If the British Navy is going to be any help to the United States! Navy in the Pacific, if the aircraft which are being built in such huge quantities are to be of avail to the meagre American forces in the Pacific, the time for that help is now. If it is not given now the Japanese can consolidate their positions and entrench themselves for several years. “It may be assumed that the United States has put into the Pacific a relatively small force to carry on a major war. If all eyes are fixed on Europe, and the Pacific is to wait its turn, the cost in the end may be so big that when the Americans some day get the facts they will protest bitterly at the neglect of our forces in the Pacific.” .. NEED OF BOLDER ACTION. An Australian reflection of a succinct assessment by Hanson Baldwin, of the “New York Times,” that “It is nearly five months since the marines stormed Guadalcanal—and we are still 3400 miles from Tokio,” comes from . the “Sydney Morning Herald,” which expresses the opinion that an Allied holding policy in this theatre plays into Japan’s hands. “The bitter Gona-Buna struggle may well be visualised as a microcosm of the whole Pacific war,” declares the paper in an editorial. “Just as the Japanese have entrenched themselves in New Guinea by making the utmost use of the time between the invasion and the counter-attack, so they are clinching their grip on the vast empire which they have overrun, consolidating it within a protective ring and striving to- extract from its resources the means of carrying .on a protracted war. Timo is on their side in the sense that the longer they are. left in possession the harder it will be to throw them out.” , . There is little doubt, however, that those who are responsible for the United Nations’ global strategy now view the war in the Pacific much more sympathetically than may have been the case six months ago. The increased numbers of Allied troops at various bases in this theatre are clearly not intended for purely defensive purposes. It may be that valid criticism of the Allied holding policy will be answered not by the obvious, slow and costly development of the present Papuan and Solomons campaigns but by bolder strokes. .