NEW LIGHT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 November 1943, Page 3

NEW LIGHT

ON AMERICAN STRATEGY IN PACIFIC. REALITIES AND FICTITIOUS CONTROVERSY. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 25. “Admiral Nimitz's offensive places the old controversy of Pacific strategy in an entirely new light for it discloses that the real strategy in this theatre is dictated by the navy,” says the “Herald Tribune’s” writer, Walter Lippmann. “What Admiral Nimitz is undertaking now is essentially what the navy has always intended to do in the war against Japan —gain command of the western Pacific and make the Japanese island empire subject to American sea power. “The navy never intended to fight the main action against Japan from Australia. We had to fight from Australia only because our unpreparedness in 1941 compelled us to retreat to Australia. The navy has never agreed to the idea that the main attack against Japan could be launched from the distant and inconvenient places to which disasters and defeat compelled us to retire. Thus the whole controversy about the size of the force assigned to General MacArthur has been fictitious, for while the controversy has been aired in Congress and in the Press, the actual concentration of American power for the main challenge to Japan has been progressing secretly in another theatre —the theatre where the navy always meant to make its main effort.” The ‘Herald Tribune,” in a leading article, says it is safe ■to say that henceforth every Japanese action in the Solomons, New Guinea, Burma and China will be affected by the feverish calculations forced on Tokio by Admiral Nimitz’s advance. This, came in high time because the situation in China is too good, the preparations in India are slow and the New Guinea offensive alone is too feeble to exert a decisive effect. But with a new factor introduced into the Pacific equation, results should begin to appear.