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Show Are We Losing The War With Japan Representative Maas, who has recently returned from the South Pacific area, declares that the United States is losing the war with Japan. The Congressman, if we remember re-member correctly, was recently decorated by General MacArthur because he was in a plane which flew over New Guinea. We may be wrong, but this decoration seems to carry a slight odor. Hundreds of men have been ii. planes flying over New Guinea without receiving any decoration. Mr. Maas thinks affairs in the Far East have been badly managed man-aged and believes that greater attention should have been paid to the Japanese. What the Congressman evidently evi-dently argues is that the United States should pay less attention to Germany and concentrate most of its forces in the Far East. We also seem to remember that he was somewhat effusive in his demand for a "unified command" inthe Far East and, we suspect, his idea is to give General Mac-Arthur Mac-Arthur spreme control. The Congressman does not a-gree a-gree with the policy that is followed fol-lowed by this Government designed de-signed to defeat Germany first and then use the combined navies of the United States and Great Britain to whip the Japanese. This strategy is almost a necessity necessi-ty in view of the fact that the Japanese have naval superiority in the Far East and that, after observing the fighting that has occurred, most experts have concluded con-cluded that tremendous naval strength will be needed to defeat the Japanese. Unfortunately, neither the U-nited U-nited States nor Great Britain has sufficient naval strength to assign as-sign overwhelming forces to the Far Eastern sector. Consequently, it wil be necessary to await the completion of some of the warships war-ships now being built before undertaking un-dertaking a grand offensive a-gainst a-gainst the Japanese. We cannot agree with the Congressman's Con-gressman's opinion that we are losing the war in the Pacific. It is true that the Japanese made tremendous territorial gains in the early months of the war but, since the Battle of the Coral Sea, no gains have been made by the enemy. Operations in the Solomons Solo-mons and New Fuinea indicate that the Japs have been effectively effec-tively stopped several times and, unless some unexpected diaster occurs, the suply route to the South Pacific and the Continent of Austrilia are secure. |
