Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1943. NAZI & JAPANESE GAMBLES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1943. NAZI & JAPANESE GAMBLES.

4 } TT may or may not be true that Hitler has been urging Japan to attack .Russia simultaneously with the German summer offensive on the Eastern trout. Probably Germany has lost no opportunity of seeking helpful co-operation from Japan, but it remains in any case tolerably certain that the Asiatic Axis partner will fall in with German desires, in this matter oi in others, only in the extent to which she sees advantage to herselt in doing so. The next few weeks, or at most the next month or two, should be highly interesting from this standpoint. It should be determined very soon, that is to say, whether the Nazis and the Japanese war lords are able to perceive an opportunity 01. co-op-erating to their mutual advantage. Failure to discern any opportunity of the kind would be tantamount to an acknowledgment on their part that they were facing ultimate defeat. The dilemma in which Japan finds herself is perhaps best understood in relation to facts of war which were outlined broadly, but cleaily, by Mr Churchill in his address some weeks ago in Washington — the address in which the British Prime Minister again pledged the best strategic employment of British forces against Japan, in comradeship with American forces, “while there is breath in our bodies, while blood flows in our veins.” On that occasion, Air Churchill said, amongst other things, that: — A notable part in the war against Japan must of course be played by the large armies and by the air and naval forces now marshalled on the eastern frontiers of India. In. this quarter lies one of the means of bringing aid to hard-pressed and long-tor-mented China. I regard the bringing of effective and immediate aid to China as one of the most urgent of our common tasks. This is an undertaking to be borne in mind at a time when China is entering upon the seventh year of her long and indomitable struggle-against the Japanese invaders of her soil and the Chinese Generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek, is predicting that this year will witness crushing blows against the enemy in various work! theatres and an unending stream of victories. Mr Churchill also said in Washington, however, that in the conferences at Casablanca in January last between President Roosevelt and himself, and between their high expert advisers, it was evident that, while the defeat of Japan would not mean the defeat of Germany, the defeat of Germany would inevitably mean the ruin of Japan. The realisation of this truth (he added) does not mean that both sides should not proceed together and indeed the major part of the United States forces is now deployed on the Pacific front in the broad division which we then made of our labours. The fact that “the defeat of Germany would inevitably mean the ruin of Japan” may be regarded as providing the latter country with her only apparent motive, in existing circumstances, for attacking Russia. It is just conceivable that the Japanese war lords may match Hitler’s present gamble.on the Eastern front with a not less desperate gamble of their own, undertaken in the hope of averting a united Allied attack on their home territory . It seems rather more likely, however, that even the most venturesome of the Japanese militarists will recognise, as an American commentator, Major Fielding Eliot, has suggested, that their country is not possessed of the sources that would enable her “to fight stoutly in the Pacific as well as to launch an attack against Russia.”