NEW YORK: “The Cairo terms of the Allies make it likely that we are in for a very long war in the Pacific,” writes Raymond Clapper, widely syndicated American columnist. “Under the terms decided upon at Cairo, Japan would be reduced to the status of a small island country, stripped of all her empire and therefore of all the materials necessary to war industry. All Japan’s acquisitions, beginning with Formosa which was taken from the Chinese 50 years ago, would be stripped away.

“These are the pledges which the Allies made to each other. As nearly as it is impossible to do so, the Allies have pronounced the death sentence of the Japanese empire and decreed the international equivalent of solitary confinement on this malicious power which has indulged in every kind of international crime to advance her material ambitions.

“But this sentence is easier pronounced than executed. You have only to read the dispatches telling of the bloody landing at Tarawa to realise the kind of long drawn-out warfare which the Cairo conferees felt capable of waging when they declared their intentions concerning Japan... — Dawn Delhi

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2018