Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1943. A CENTRAL PACIFIC TEST.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 November 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1943. A CENTRAL PACIFIC TEST.

QOOD grounds appear to exist for the contentions advanced by a New York commentator, Major Fielding Elliot, that the landings on several, islands of the Gilbert group, in which American forces are now making victorious progress, are a test of Japanese sea and air power and ol' Japanese ability to hold the central Pacific at all. It appears to be/ uncertain at the moment whether Japan will risk a major naval action in, de- . fence of the chain of island bases.she has established across the South Pacific —a chain the Allies have already broken and penetrated to a preliminary but important extent. It is clear, however, that these outposts cannot be held unless their communications are made secure and this as obviously implies that unless she can maintain these communications Japan will be faced by no better prospect than that of progressive defeat in a war of attrition moving more or less rapidly by stages towards her homeland. On some immediate grounds, the reluctance of the Japanese to risk their main battle fleet is understandable. The Washington correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald,” Mr A. D. Rothman, observed in a recent article that British and American experts are agreed that when the Japanese main fleet can be manoeuvred into a set battle, Japan will be a conquered country. Within the past six months, Mr Rothman said, American task forces adequately supported, had repeatedly sought a major action with the Japanese fleet. But (he added) it has become increasingly clear that the Japanese will not venture their home fleet until the threat to the home islands becomes immediate. American naval commanders still hope that, perhaps by accident, the main naval engagement with the Japanese may come sooner than is expected, and they are ready for it. But this eventuality is not at present the largest element in Allied strategy. In themselves and in the prospects they open the landings’ in the Gilbert Islands must sharpen considerably the naval dilemma, by which the Japanese are confronted. They have no obvious means,-other than a fleet action of attempting to defeat that campaign, of which Colonel Knox (United States Secretary for the Navy) has spoken, to drive them' from the mandated islands. These mandated islands stretch across the Pacific to the comparatively near neighbourhood of the 'Philippines and their conquest by stages would represent, from the Japanese standpoint, a development damaging in itself and calculated to link up dangerously with Allied land and amphibious operations in South-Eastern Asia.

Nothing is known definitely about the lines on which the Allies propose to develop their campaign in South-Eastern Asia. There are said to be sojne differences of opinion between Allied leaders as to the relative advantages of an attack on Burma, and an attack on Sumatra and Malaya. It may be taken for granted, however, that the Allies are intent on a powerful effort to reestablish, in one way or another, effective communication with China and to attain a position in which the Chinese eastern ports will become available as bases for action against Japan. Success in driving the Japanese out of the mandated islands no doubt would cut across the enemy main communications and might be expected greatly to assist and facilitate Allied operations in South-Eastern Asia. This stands out so plainly, indeed, that anything short of a full-powered effort by the Japanese to defend and hold the mandated islands would amount at least to a damaging admission of inferiority and weakness. An abandonment of the island garrisons to their fate might well be regarded as implying an acceptance of the inevitability of ultimate defeat.