Brighter Picture

The Japanese rush into Manipur, India's easternmost state, had apparently reached its peak, was receding before British attack. In North Burma General Joseph W. Stilwell's columns pushed slowly along the Ledo Road toward China. Airborne British and Indian Raiders, recently reinforced, roamed through the Japanese rear, slashing and wrecking.

The Admiral Explains. As the outlook brightened, Admiral the Lord Louis Mountbatten finally acknowledged the public dissatisfaction, confusion and concern, took unusual steps to explain. When specific questions were submitted by the A.P., American and British leaders in Ceylon headquarters conferred two days. Then Mountbatten answered the questions and added a statement.

Said the Admiral: the Japanese advance into Manipur 1) had not dislocated the Allied strategy schedule in Burma-India, 2) had not delayed Stilwell, probably helped him, 3) did not hamper air supply to the Raiders.

The Japanese, said he, had twin aims: political propaganda in India; the capture of favorable positions for attack on the Assam-Bengal railway -- chief supply line for China as well as the India and Burma battlefronts. The Allied countermove is first to locate and pin down the Japs, prevent them from gaining full use of roads, squeeze their supplies. Secondly, the British would attack and destroy the enemy -- an operation which would take several weeks.

Mountbatten added these facts:

P: On an 800-mile-long front of jungle and hill, the enemy cannot be prevented from making deep penetrations.

P: The Japanese attack was expected.

P: "The true picture has not been hidden."

One other fact was indicated: although the monsoon, due in several weeks, will restrict major operations, Stilwell's fight for a land route to China will go on.

If the Admiral was also asked about the effect of the Manipur fighting on air delivery of supplies "over the Hump" to China and Claire Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force, neither question nor answer came through the rigid British censorship. From outside India the conclusion seemed to be that, no matter how successfully the Manipur battle had been fought, both the Chinese Army and Chennault had suffered from the North Burma campaign.

In the past six weeks Manipur and North Burma have siphoned off supplies urgently needed for Chennault's China bases.

In pushing into India, the Japs may well have let themselves in for heavy losses, missed the bus by not throwing all their strength against Stilwell and the Raiders. But their campaign would not be a 100% failure.

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