SLOW WAY TO TOKYO

This map shows why it will take time to get to the heart of the trouble in the Pacific.

In terms of captured territory, Japan made all its gains south and west of Formosa and the Carolines in less than a year. The Allies, on the other hand, have spent a year sending that little sprout up from Moumea to Guadalcanal and Munda and those tiny arterioles out from Port Moresby to Finschhaven in the north and to the Woodlark Islands off Milne Bay in the east. The difference is that no one was dug in to delay the Japs, whereas the Japs, who are diggers extraordinary, have consolidated themselves. Their arteries are hardened.

And yet that is not the whole story. A vastly greater Allied accomplishment than the small geographic advances has been the nourishment of the supply line which runs nearly 10,000 miles from California to action. Early last year that supply line was practically nonexistent. Now it is just as big, easily as firm as the Japanese lines.

Fallacies. A study of the Japanese arteries will show why two assumptions commonly made about beating the Japs are probably fallacious.

One assumption is that Allied forces could strike north from Australia to the Philippines and Formosa, thereby cutting off the great artery to Japan's ill-got Empire, before other steps are taken in the central and western Pacific. The trouble with this assumption is that Japan's other great artery, reaching south to the Marianas and Carolines, would remain untouched. The Empire artery would be uncut until the very moment of reaching Formosa. In other words, the Allied advance would be up a precarious salient flanked by Japan's two greatest naval and military lines. The risk would be tremendous.

The other assumption is that the Allies could cut through Burma into China and strike at Japan overland before other steps are taken in lower Asia. The trouble with this assumption, at least until vastly greater weight can be shifted from Europe and until a vastly more efficient arterial system is built up in India, is that it would leave intact that very intricate and dangerously efficient system of supply below Formosa, taking in Singapore, Siam, Indo-China and lower Burma. The Japanese would be able to move forces on the Allied right flank far faster than the Allies could move their own main forces.

Probabilities. Logically, Truk must be captured. This would mean a gradual pruning--cutting off the Marshalls and Gilberts, cutting off Rabaul, then striking at Truk. On the other flank the same kind of process will probably be in order--a pruning not only in Burma but down the line as well, at the Andamans, perhaps, or Malaya or the Dutch islands. The Japanese arteries will be meaningless when they have no flesh into which to feed military lifeblood.

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