LOST OPPORTUNITIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 April 1943, Page 3

LOST OPPORTUNITIES

IN WAR AGAINST JAPAN LAMENTED BY MR. CURTIN. ATTACK ON ALLIED POLICY. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) CANBERRA, April 9. “Let us hope the Pacific will not become the front where the United Nations lost the war,” said the Prime Minister, Mr. Curtin, in a special statement supplementing that of General MacArthur on the occasion of the first anniversary of the fall of Bataan. Mr. Curtin’s statement virtually was a strong denunciation of the United Nations’ plan of a holding war in the Pacific, and was the Prime Minister’s first criticism of the Allied grand strategy since the Casablanca conference in January decided on the “Beat Hitler First” policy. i •"i The statement continued: “The anniversary of the fall of Bataan is a sad reminder that the Pacific has become a front of lost opportunities. The United Nations successively failed to establish a rallying point in the Philippines, at Singapore, in the Netherlands East Indies and at Rabaul. The flood of aggression has flowed to the verges of the last main base in the South-West Pacific. In their advance the Japanese have been highly vulnerable to coun-ter-attacks, and golden opportunities have been missed to deal them some heavy blows. As a result, they have been allowed to consolidate, and their defeat will now be a longer and harder task. “Australia has shown ready willingness to co-operate in other war theatres at considerable risk to her own security. Others have decreed • that Germany must be beaten first. We must, therefore, exert every endeavour to ensure that the Pacific does not become the lost front. Bataan and Singapore stand as a warning to the United Nations. They have a symbolism for the future which is too significant to be forgotten.’ FALL OF BATAAN ANNIVERSARY STATEMENT BY MACARTHUR. HOPE OF REDEMPTION. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, April 8. On the first anniversary of the fall of Bataan, General MacArthur issued the following statement:— “A year ago today the dimming light of Bataan’s forlorn hope fluttered and died. Its prayers by that time—it prayed as well as fought—were reduced to .a simple formula rendered by hungry men through parched lips: ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ The light failed, and Bataan was starved into collapse. The wrecks of what were once our men and women groan and sweat in prison toil. Our faithful Filipino wards —sixteen million souls — gasp in the slavery of the conquering soldiery. I was the leader of the lost cause, and from the bottom of my seared and stricken heart I pray that the merciful God may not delay too long their redemption; that the day of salvation may be not so far removed that they shall perish, and that it will be not again too late.”