World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF AUSTRALIA: Secondary Front

The tide of fighting in Russia and Egypt, the tone of talk in Washington and London made it clear to Australia last week that one of its worst fears was realized. Australia had become a secondary, rather than a second, front. Obviously Britain and the U.S. were headed toward a second front in Europe, not in the Pacific, leaving Australia for the moment to hold a purely defensive position with the aid of U.S. soldiers and supplies already there. In the opinion of United Nations strategists, Australia could do it, though none, least of all General Douglas MacArthur, was expected to be very happy in the back seat.

Since the Battle of the Coral Sea the Japs had done little but raid Darwin and Port Moresby inconclusively. To these attacks, bombers under General MacArthur's command had replied with raids on Jap bases in New Britain, New Guinea, Timor and one 800-mile thrust at Celebes. But, by the standards of global war, this was relative quiet along a South Pacific front which three months ago seemed destined for more of the war's hottest fighting.

In those months General MacArthur, beglamored by Bataan, had reached Australia to take over a united command amid the plaudits of a hero-hungry people. Australian spirits rebounded from the Singapore slump to a crest of clamor for men & tools to launch a gigantic offensive northward against the Japanese. Not till the staggering news of the fall of Tobruk did Australians realize that their Pacific second front was receding into the future, and chat they had in their midst the strange spectacle of a four-star general, only top-ranking U.S. officer experienced in actual combat in World War II, stranded on the war's back stoop without a fight on his hands.