Ramparts of the Pacific

THIS book is the outcome of a nine weeks’ journey by air to the prospective theater of war in the East Indies, from which the author returned exactly a month before Pearl Harbor. With no little confusion of arrangement, it weaves together a rather commonplace discussion of general problems of the Pacific, and a record of things seen and heard during this last-minute survey. This record is of keen interest, and parts of it will have a permanent historical value. As a veteran correspondent in the East, all doors were open to Mr. Abend — and he is able to set down at first hand the views of the highest political and military authorities on the expected conflict.

These revealed a sharp contrast of professional opinion. Admiral Helfrich, at Java, believed that the seizing of Indo-China had reversed the odds in favor of Japan, and that her relative position grew stronger month by month. At Manila, General MacArthur held an opposite view. He believed that Japan was then concentrating her armies in Manchuria, and that Japanese transports could not bring more than 125,000 men against the Philippines. At the beginning of October he explained: “Give me a couple of months more, and it will be hopeless for Japan to attack. . . . Their conquest even now would be so hugely costly that it would not pay any foe to make the attempt.”

These views Mr. Abend was authorized to cable home October 3, in a dispatch passed by General MacArthur’s unofficial “scrutineers.” The author suggests that the “masterly retreat” to Bataan is a phrase we use “to cover our chagrin and shame at the loss of Manila.” He offers the conclusion: “. . . in the Philippines, too, there was complacency and overconfidence. We lost because in Manila the Japanese forces were underestimated, both as to strength and ability, and because General MacArthur thought his forces were strong enough to repel any attempt at invasion Japan was strong enough to make.” T. H. T.