PACIFIC STRATEGY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 March 1943, Page 4

PACIFIC STRATEGY

DISCUSSION IN UNITED STATES REPORTED OPINION OF GENERALS MR CHURCHILL CRITICISED. BY GENERAL CHIANG KAI-SHEK. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day. 11.45 a.m.) NEW YORK, March 23. While some American war commentators are discussing an imminent offensive against Rabaul and others are stressing the present strategic impracticability of such an offensive, a correspondent of the North American Newspaper Alliance says it is known that Lieutenant-General Kenney, Air Commander in the SouthWest Pacific, and Major-General Sutherland, contend that the Allied movement against the Japanese from Australia has gone as far

as it can profitably be pressed. They explain, he adds, that successful operations in New Guinea and the Solomons have made Australia safe, but they are doubtful whether it would be advantageous to take Rabaul, or even to displace the Japanese from Lae and Salamaua, because when they are rooted out in ’ one spot the Japanese simply turn up in another and the job of expelling them from hundreds of Pacific islands would be endless. Both generals agree that the war against the Japanese must be fought, firstly, by increased air and naval attacks against shipping, and secondly by retaking Burma and reestablishing communication with China. The correspondent adds that the British answer is that the recapture of Burma requires a major Allied fleet as well as increased supplies for the Far East. Therefore the key to the war against the Japanese is complete repossession of the Mediterranean in order to release British naval units to re-establish a short shipping route to the Far East. The “Chicago Tribune” says editorially that the whole strategical picture of the war against Japan needs a complete overhauling of American lend-lease allocations, if the Pacific front is not to be defaulted. “If assignments under lend-lease were arranged proportionately to the urgencies of threats to America’s safety, the Pacific front's claim is far and away the most pressing,” says the paper.

Mr Churchill's reiteration of the “Beat Hitler First” policy, has drawn a rebuke from Madame Chiang Kaishek. She revised the text of a speech she had prepared, after listening to the-' British Prime Minister’s world broadcast.

Mr Churchill’s statement that the full weight of the Allies would not be thrown against the Japanese until Germany was beaten, and that partial demobilisation would follow Hitler’s defeat, is reported to have caused Madame Chiang to interpolate into her speech, delivered in the Chicago Stadium, the observation that: “It is an easy thing to court the approbation of one’s countrymen; it is a harder thing to speak according to the dictates of conscience. This is especially so when one’s conscience tells one that to prevent future destruction and carnage one must think not only in terms of the good of one’s country, but in terms of the good of other peoples.” The “New York Herald-Tribune” correspondent comments: “This last minute addition to Madame Chiang’s address drew tumultuous applause from her Mid-West audience, who take a less academic view of the war against the Japanese than the people in the Eastern States.”