NEWS OF THE WEEK
Iis unlikely that the official statement on the Washington con- ' versations, when it comes, will add anything material to our knowledge of what has been decided. Everything that would interest the public of this country and America would interest the enemy still more. Our own curiosity, therefore, must go unsatisfied. What has emerged clearly from Mr. Churchill's address to Congress. and his talk to the Press is that the campaign in the Pacific area is to be pressed on with new vigour. A considerable section of opinion in the United States is demanding that ; so are all sections of opinion in Australia and China ; and the importance of the decision to India is manifest. American operations in the Aleutians have their obvious place in this scheme of things. Meanwhile certain new developments of the war in Europe are of considerable interest as well as of considerable importance. The possibilities of bombing from the air are being exploited as they never have been before, and the results may be far-reaching. Bomber Command at home is clearly bent on making the Ruhr uninhabitable, or, at any rate, making the maintenance of war industries on any substantial scale there impossible. The Dortmund and Dusseldorf raids of this week are only the beginning of a systematic onslaught which promises to increase rather than diminish in ferocity. If about a dozen towns in the Ruhr basin, with the communications radiating from them, are subjected to this treatment, the Ruhr will be virtually out of action. The results of that on German production would be in- calculable. Italy and the adjacent islands are being assailed in the same way on an, as yet, smaller scale. There the aim is not to dislocate industry—there is no industry of importance south of Naples--but to disrupt communications and shoot the enemy air- forces out of the sky. It looks like succeeding.
