For Want of a Nail...

Now--this week--the immediate, imperative task of the United Nations in the Far Pacific is not to defeat the Japanese but to stop him. If he can be stopped, held in his tracks, he can then be driven back and defeated before he secures a strangle hold on the Pacific World.

This means that the Allies must hold these crucial points: Singapore, at the doorway to the Indian Ocean and the China Sea; Rangoon, where the road forks to India and China; Java's strong points; Australia's port, Darwin.* Even if Singapore falls, if the others are held, the Allies will still have their precious chance to exhaust the Jap to deny him control of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

What Would It Take? If the enemy is stopped, the U.S. must do most of the stopping. What the U.S. is actually doing to stop the Jap, how the high strategists rate the chances to stop him, are military secrets. But elemental Pacific arithmetic is not.

> One thousand fresh fighter planes, in immediate operation from Rangoon to Darwin, would give the Allies a better than even chance to buck Japan's thinned and scattered Air Force, to save a minimum number of vital airdromes, to hold the skies until U.S. bombers arrived in effective numbers. Even 500 fighters--approximately one group each at five centers--might do the trick, if they arrived immediately and were quickly followed by more.

> Five hundred big bombers for a starter, with as many more following in quick order, could play havoc with Japanese troop convoys--as a fraction of 500 did in the Strait of Macassar. > Five anti-aircraft regiments--again, one each at the do-or-die points--would give limited, local ground protection from Jap bombers, until more guns and crews arrived. But the only safe anti-aircraft maxim is "all you can get," and the far Pacific could use all the guns the U.S. can produce, man and ship for months to come. Anti-aircraft is second only to planes on the list of emergency priorities which the Indies' Lieut. Governor General Hubertus van Mook handed Washington last month.

>Third on Dr. van Mook's list is naval reinforcement. The Dutch asked only for light naval craft: destroyers, light cruisers and submarines. Any newsreader could note the effectiveness of the small U.S. Asiatic Fleet (with its supporting aircraft) in blasting Japanese convoys in the Strait of Macassar. He could note, too, the depressing fact that the Jap first approached vital Amboina with a piddling naval escort, got little or no naval opposition. Three cruisers, a dozen destroyers, even one aircraft carrier, would bolster U.S. and Dutch naval strength in the Indies, would help to stop the Jap short of Java.

>But the Navy would have another, even more pressing demand to meet: for warships to convoy aircraft reinforcements before it was too late. Immediate delivery of 1,000 fighters (at least some of the bombers could be delivered by air) with 15,000 men (pilots, air crews and ground crews) would take perhaps 100 freighters of average tonnage, and all would have to be shielded from submarine and air attack.

Such were the minimum, unofficial calculations of what it would take to stop the Jap where he would have to be stopped first--in the air. They were only the beginning: to keep 1,000 fighters in the air, the U.S. would have to put another 1,000 on the spot very soon. It would have to duplicate the initial bomber force as well.

If these figures seemed low, the Jap's known air strength was also low. By economical, concentrated use of his Air Force, he made it look much bigger than it actually was. According to the best pre-December estimates, the Japanese Navy had about 2,000 planes, the Army about 1,700. Many of these were obsolescent--but far from useless.

Men & Spirit. Where the Jap has won, he has finally won on the ground. And he has been stopped only on the ground--by General MacArthur's outnumbered heroes and guns in the Philippines.

For the defense of all-important Java the Dutch put U.S. manpower a low fourth in hurry-up priority. The British Empire, Australia and China must, for the present, supply groundpower for Rangoon and Burma. So runs the current United Nations strategy. But--given the men, equipment and shipping to get them to the fronts--the U.S. could turn the course of the Pacific war with a relatively few, judiciously distributed ground forces.

>The Jap reportedly has no more than 100,000 men in Burma. With the British and Imperials now facing them--and slowly retreating--25,000 additional U.S. troops might well save Rangoon and the Burma Road. In Java a few divisions would radically change the immediate prospect, for the Dutch Army is an army of small garrisons.

To Hold Australia. If the Jap were stopped where he stood this week, Australia would never be assaulted. Once in Australia, he would be past stopping; but Australia could be one base for the long and costly effort to drive him back from the Indies, the Philippines, Malaya. So Australia must be held. Australia prays first of all for U.S. armored divisions, then for motorized infantry and fighter planes to spread over its vast coastlines and well-roaded southern interior. For dispatch to the rest of the imperiled Pacific, or in the last resort for defense of the continent itself, Australia's order was: "All you can send." Five well-equipped, well-balanced divisions probably could hold Darwin and the nearby northern coast against Jap attack on any scale he has yet shown. For Australia as a whole, twice as many would be hard pressed to meet the Jap at all his possible points of attack.

Transpacific troop movements on even this minimum scale would require huge concentrations of shipping. The Army's standard calculation is ten tons of shipping for every foot soldier, 100 tons per man for mechanized units.

Some U.S. reinforcements had reached the Pacific last week, and General Sir Archibald Wavell promised that much more was to come. The first U.S. P-40s winged over Java.

But until U.S. planes and ships and men arrive in numbers that can be called round, the defenders will have to fight hard with what little they have. This week China's Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, who is used to getting along very well on a ravelled shoestring, arrived in India for conversations which may be historic with the Viceroy and military commanders. Said the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow: "This is a meeting which bodes our enemy no good, and this they will soon learn to their cost."

*Douglas MacArthur's epic stand in the Philippines contributed immeasurably to the job of stopping the Jap, but the final line of Allied resistance must be Rangoon-Darwin.

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