If Singapore Falls

The news from Singapore could not be much worse. Nothing short of a miracle can prevent the Japanese from capturing this "practically impregnable" fortress in a very few days, perhaps even hours. When Singapore falls, the last hope of a relatively short war against Japan will disappear, and America will have to climb down out of its cloud of wishful thinking and face the hard, cruel facts of a hard, cruel war.

There is a question as to whether or not Japan will be able to make use of the resources of the Dutch East Indies in time to improve her own industrial and military capacity. Some observers claim that she has not enough well-trained specialists to reorganize the ruined oil and rubber industries of the Spice Islands. But even if this is true, it is being extremely unrealistic to sit back and say that all we have to do is establish a blockade of the South China Sea and Japan will automatically fold up in short order. Besides the fact that we do not know how long this "short order" will be, it is going to be extremely difficult, once Singapore is lost, to establish such a blockade.

If Singapore were held by the British as a naval base, the United States and Britain could base a large number of raiders at this highly strategic position and make life completely miserable for all Japanese shipping passing from the Indies to Japan. Also, Japanese control of the coast of Indo China would be made extremely tenuous. But with Singapore lost, all commerce destroying in this area must be conducted from Pearl Harbor, some five thousand miles away. Needless to say, this is not a very efficient means of blockade. The only alternative to such a blockade is for the superior American Battle Fleet to engage the Japanese fleet, and wipe it off the sea. But without bases nearer to Japan than Pearl Harbor, we have no means of forcing the Japanese fleet to engage in a battle action.

So what we must do is win back our bases one by one--the long, tedious road back across the Pacific, over which we lost control in the first few weeks of fighting. This we can do, and in the long run we will do it; but it is about time we realized that we will be years, not months, in accomplishing our purpose.