Key to a Salient

The Jap's big advantage--operation on interior lines--may continue to win him battles. But it cannot win a global war from a foe that still hems him in. On this basic principle of strategy the Jap got two object lessons last week.

One was the Battle of the Coral Sea (see p. 18), where his attempt to break through to the outside across the United Nations' sea lines of communication was smashed. The other was the taking of Madagascar by the British.

The Jap was still busy, and wondrously successful, in the first steps toward joining the German and pinching off the great United Nations salient between Calcutta and Gibraltar. To pinch off that salient he needed control of the Indian Ocean, and he had a good start--Singapore, the Indies, Rangoon. But the other key to the salient was Madagascar, and the busy Japanese couldn't get to it in time.

In the vaulting strategy of the Axis, the Madagascar setback meant more than the loss of the world's fourth largest* island, with its resources in agriculture and minerals. It meant postponement of the Axis' principal aim: control of the seas. As long as the United Nations had that control, uninterrupted around the perimeter of the world, the best the Axis could win would be a Germanized Europe. Without that control, the Jap's dream of a Greater New Order in East Asia was cobwebs and moonshine.

Madagascar stands like a listless but potentially powerful sentinel athwart the vital supply line that feeds the United Nations salient separating Jap from German. In ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope go planes and tanks and men to fight, from Egypt to Calcutta. They pass within range of Madagascar's bases. North of the island, aircraft can be flown across the Indian Ocean to Australia or Ceylon. And in Madagascar's fields and harbors, planes and ships can be refueled and repaired.

The Jap could have used Madagascar.

* Ten largest: Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar, Baffin, Sumatra, Honshu, Great Britain, Celebes, South New Zealand.

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