PRAISE & CRITICISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 March 1943, Page 4

PRAISE & CRITICISM

OF MR CHURCHILL’S SPEECH AUSTRALIAN VIEWS DESIRE FOR MORE PLANES AND SHIPS. TO BE USED AGAINST JAPAN. (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 12.55 p.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. “Mr Churchill uses a masterly brush on a broad canvas, and his great speech on post-war reconstruction lacked nothing in its range, its imagination and public appeal, when compared with any of its preceding and justly famous addresses on the progress of the war,” says the “Sydney Morning Herald” editorially today. This comment typifies the sober Australian reaction to Mr Churchill’s view of the world after the war, but many newspaper and radio commentators express disappointment with the lack of .encouragement which the speech holds for the peoples: of the Pacific. “With the Japanese exploiting the oil of the Netherlands East Indies, the rubber and tin of Malaya, the food resources of the Philippines and IndoChina, and with Japan’s hold on this new empire being steadily strengthened, the .possibility of her collapsing be-, fore Germany appears so fantastically remote as not to-be worth mentioning,” declared one radio news' analyst here. It is generally felt that Mr Churchill’s speech supports the view that the war will be a long one. Some commentators employ his speech to reiterate the old arguments for increased Allied war strength in this theatre. The “Sydney Telegraph” says: “The Japanese, securely entrenched in an arc of islands around Australia’s north, have all the raw materials and food' they need, and their production is growing. That our margin of defence should correspondingly increase is only common sense. To suggest that we would imperil the ‘Finish Hitler first’ strategy if our supplies in this theatre were doubled or trebled is absurd. To suggest that the Allied resources have been heavily strained to provide a handful of planes and the few ships already allocated to General Macarthur would be ridiculous. Chinese, Dutch, Australians and those Americans who realise how powerful the Japanese are will read Mr Churchill’s reassurances with some disappointment.”