The Axis Will Crack: So What Now in the Pacific ?

Pacific ?

BECAUSE a loaded aeroplane now can fly 3,000 miles without re-fuelling, and because its effective range is growing steadily, Australia and all the Territories of the Pacific must expect that American influence in the Pacific will be strong, and perhaps paramount, for years to come. The United States has sent, and is sending, enormous forces out across the Pacific and the Atlantic to save the Anglo-American way of life from destruction by the Axis. No person of intelligence can suppose that those forces will be withdrawn while there re mains in the world, and especially in the Pacific, any threat to American and British institutions.

In the time to come, as the Nazi horror is swept away, it is to be expected that British influence and protection will ex tend over the North Atlantic, Medi terranean and African zones; that Russia will be paramount in Central and Eastern Europe and much of Asia; and that the United States will remain, in fact, the protector of all the Pacific lands. Few will quarrel with that.

The choice, for the people in the Pacific, is very clear and simple. Whom do we prefer—the cruel and semi-human little Huns of Tokio, or the Americans, who think as we do, who are non imperialist, and who keep the Statue of Liberty at the front door of their mighty nation of 130,000,000 people? If America dominates the Pacific, we can remain free and British. If the Japanese were here the victors, we should face exter mination.

WE are too close to this global war, just now, to see it in its true per spective. In a few years’ time,

when peace has returned, and we are resuming a normal way of life, we shall realise how narrowly we have escaped from the greatest conspiracy in the his tory of the human race. It is now established, beyond any doubt or argu ment, that an international gang, with headquarters in Berlin, and important associations in Rome, Vienna, Paris, Madrid and Tokio, planned the Fascist hierarchy, which took shape in the Axis, designed to destroy Anglo-French power and dominate and enslave the world.

The plan, in its essentials, was simple and apparently certain of success. Ger many was to occupy all the Western European nations except Spain; Italy was to join Germany in an attack upon France which, honey-combed from within by Fifth Columnists, would quickly collapse; Britain, thus isolated, would listen, to the voices of her rich and privileged classes and, to save her Em pire, would enter into Treaty relations with Germany; the United States, under British influence and the activities of a vast, underground organisation of Fifth Columnists, would remain out of the war, although making many threatening motions; and then Germany and Japan would fall upon Russia, and quickly put an end to that semi-Communistic regime.

The French Empire would be partitioned out among the Axis victors; while some of Asiatic Russia, much of China, the British countries in Malaya, Borneo and the Pacific, and all the Dutch Indies, would go to Japan. Sooner or later, Japan would receive, also, the Philippines, Siam, Burma, and perhaps some of India. The Axis would rule the world, and the Nazis would rule the Axis.

Look it over, and see for yourself how nearly that plan succeeded—in other words, how near we Europeans of the Pacific were to becoming the slaves of the Jap. If the plan had gone according to schedule, the arrogant little men of Tokio would not have remained north of the Equator. It was essential to the beauty of the Jap face that the Jap should boss Australia. South America and all the Pacific territories between.

SEEN as part of the global set-up, we Europeans in the Pacific are pathe tically few —seven millions in Aus tralia, 1 1 millions in New Zealand, a quarter-million in the Indies, and less than a hundred thousand in all the other Pacific lands. In the Global Conspiracy of the Axis, we were only slightly more than nothing—we_did not count at all.

It is as well to recognise that. While British power was unassailed, and the White Ensign went unchallenged upon the seas, we imagined ourselves com pletely secure in all our Pacific countries.

To-day, with Mother Britain fighting for her life on the other side of the world, we should have been slaves, or refugees, or corpses, like the Europeans of the North-western Pacific, had it not been for the quick-moving, valiant forces of the United States.

FASCISM’S Global Conspiracy failed. It should have succeeded. It was based upon the apparent failure of the democratic system.

The people of the democratic countries (argued the Fascists), after achieving political freedom, had allowed themselves to become enslaved by economic and in dustrial conditions which their Parlia ments seemed powerless to control.

Therefore (argued the Fascists) Britain and France, suffering class discontent and internal disruption, never can gear themselves to war so as to defend them

selves against the super-men of Nazi dom. Democracy (said the conspirators) was finished. The time had come for the establishment of a New Order. The Fascists would establish the New Order —and, in the process, the gangsters would become the lords of creation.

Our grand-children, reading the history of 1937-42, will gasp with amazement when they see how near a half-crazy house-painter named Schickelgruber (Hitler, if you want his assumed name) came to being master of the world.

WHERE and when did the plan fail?

It failed between June and Sep tember, 1940, when Hitler paused in Paris to drag Foch’s railway carriage out of the Hotel des Invalides, and take it to Compeigne Forest, so as to humiliate the French by making them sign there his brutal Armistice, on the verv spot vrhere Germany signed on November 11, 1918.

Whfie Schickelgruber was indulging his theatncalism. and lust for revenge, the British were feverishly preparing for the assault; and, when it came, in the late months of 1940, it was thrown back.

Britain lived, the last free nation ih Europe, a rallying-point for mankind’s liberties and human decencies.

Had the egregious Schickelgruber left poor France to her agonies—for by mid- June, 1940. she was helpless, and at the mercy of the Hun—and thrown all his available forces at England, England probably would not have survived, and the British Empire would have been at an end. Civilisation was saved by the inability of the egocentric to refrain from torturing his stricken victim. The wheel turned; Tie missed his chance; and now it has come full circle, and it is Schickel gruber and his trapped and disillusioned Axis who are fighting hopelessly for their lives.

The world never must forget that for a whole year Britain fought alone, en during a battering such as no nation ever before had experienced. Thus it was that British courage, and Britain’s staunch refusal to bargain with the powers of darkness, won the admiration and, finally, the co-operation of the United States, so that the world-picture was changed.

THE conspirators, having launched their Global Conspiracy, could not stop. By April-May, 1941. Britain should have been disposed of, and the way all clear to attack Russia. Britain, most inconsiderately, remained uncon quered and belligerent. She even put a “contemptible little army” into Greece.

Nazi panzers cleaned it up, in two or three months: but those two or three months were vital, because they disrupted the Nazi plan for the smashing of Russia.

When Hitler attacked Russia, late in June, 1941, the Russians were ready for him.

If Britain had been put out of action in 1940, the Axis armies would not be bleeding to death in Western Russia at this moment. The Japs, long ago, would have_ fastened their treacherous teeth in Russia’s flank, and hastened her down fall. By 1941, American public opinion, heartened and inspired by Britain's stand, began to get ready for war, and they were even accepting America’s in evitable role of world peace-maker and policeman: so that the startled Japs re fused to attack Russia until they could see whether America really would fight.

When they saw that America probably would fight, and that Japan’s long planned Asiatic-Pacific Empire might dis appear into thin air, the Tokio Japs decided to risk all on a gambler’s throw.

It had succeeded at Port Arthur in 1904; Mr. Tojo hoped it would succeed at Pearl Harbour in 1941. With America crippled, the Global Conspiracy still might succeed —in part, if not wholly. The treacherous blow was struck—and partly missed. It

spelled the doom of Japan. Literally within an hour, America was at war— and with such anger, high spirit and unity of purpose that, from that moment, the war assumed a new and different complexion.

Even then, it was doubtful whether America and Britain together could break the terrible power of the Axis. But when unknown and inscrutable Russia disclosed unsuspected military strength, and a gallant courage that won the admiration of the world, the issue was no longer in doubt. Russia broke the military power of the European section of the Axis, and gave Britain and America time to pre pare. We soon shall see the opening of the second front in Europe, and hear the cracking of the Axis.

IT is not too soon to think of the post war world—and that, so far as we are concerned, means the Pacific after the war. This is what the “PIM” expects to see:— The Japanese will be driven out of the Territories where they now are so feverishly digging in. They will be de feated and destroyed by American air power. (But don’t expect present dangers and difficulties to pass much before 1944.) The United States, in collaboration with her partners of the United Nations, will police the Pacific until she is certain that no threat to her security can arise there again. Then she will withdraw, but she will leave behind an unlimited guar antee of freedom for all Pacific peoples.

American energy, American organising genius and American money will provide the stimuli for a tremendous leap for ward in the development and settlement of the Pacific territories and exploitation of their rich natural resources. Thou sands of service-men will wish to return there.

America, in return for all that she is giving, and will give, will expect—and probably demand—an open door in future Pacific (especially South Pacific) trade and transportation. There can be noth ing wrong with that, if it is a two-ways door.