Oriental Rampart

Last week the Philippine National Assembly sat in Manila and President of the Commonwealth Manuel Quezon lay ill in bed. His friends feared that his illness might be a return of tuberculosis. But the agile little President was not too ill last week to know what was going on. He knew how precariously balanced was the fate of the British Empire and the freedom of the vast sea across which the sprawling Philippines face Asia. He knew that if Japan, already groping south, reaches for the rich empire of the East Indies, the Philippines will be in danger.

How seriously Manuel Quezon takes this danger was indicated by the message which he sent last week to his Assembly. "So long as we are under the American flag," he wrote, "it rests exclusively with the United States whether we shall be at peace or war. . . . The defense of our country remains primarily the responsibility of the United States." But his actions spoke more strongly than his words. He told the Assembly that he had asked Washington not to give the Philippines' accrued sugar-excise taxes and profits from dollar devaluation ($54,112,750 up to Dec. 31, 1940) to the Commonwealth for economic improvement, as originally intended. Instead he had asked to have the money spent on Philippine defenses under U. S. direction.

The Philippines' danger is that the islands are a threat to Japan's flank if she moves on The Netherlands Indies. To prepare for such a move, the Japanese may well make a sudden assault on the islands. The archipelago's first line of defense would be Admiral Thomas Charles Hart's thin Asiatic Fleet (two cruisers, 13 destroyers, 12 submarines, as of June 1940). In a prolonged attack the Japanese would also have to meet the full might of the Pacific Fleet, now based on Honolulu. But what worries Filipinos is the problem of immediate defense against an invasion.

The Three Sectors. Although there are only 10,000 U. S. regulars stationed in the islands (mostly in Luzon), U. S. Army men say: The Philippines can be defended.

For defense, the Philippines group themselves into three sectors: Mindanao, the Visayans and Luzon. Mindanao, which has 18,000 Japanese concentrated around Davao (pop. 95,444), is patently a salient, to be yielded in the face of an overwhelming assault. But the Visayans and Luzon, with 95% of the Philippines' population (16,356,000) and industry, form a tactical unit. The narrow, treacherous outer passages of the Visayans can be mined, and in protected inner passages light naval craft could lie in relative security between sorties against an invader.

The core of this defense sector is Luzon.

For on Luzon is not only the Philippines' capital, but their only Navy Yard (at Cavite), their only naval repair station (Olongapo), most of their fortifications and military airdromes. So long as Manila is in U. S. hands, no Japanese drive to the south could safely by-pass the islands. Hence the U. S. Army has centred its defenses about Manila. Here the defenders of the Philippines would make their last stand against an invasion. Most officers think they could hold on until help came from Honolulu.

Three Points of Attack. Although they are surrounded by Japanese naval and air bases, Luzon's defenders have geography on their side. A landing on Luzon's exposed and relatively undefended east coast would be difficult, if not impossible, because of heavy swells and a lack of shelter for enemy ships. If a landing party did get ashore there, it would have to fight its way across the rugged Santa Cruz range. A landing on the Luzon panhandle from the south or east would be equally difficult, because the invaders would have to fight their way through to the narrow bottleneck of Tayabas.

But within the defense area there are three natural landing places: Lingayen Gulf, Batangas Bay, Manila Bay. On a map, Lingayen Gulf looks Manila like a setup--a broad, sheltered stretch of water with good beaches and roads leading directly down to the heart of the defense area at Manila. But there is trouble for an invader here. The water is shallow and only the small outriggers can use the gulf's shores. To land at Lingayen an enemy would have to anchor two or three miles offshore, lighter his troops to the beach. Once ashore, he would find that the single rail road and two trunk highways leading south to Manila are really a succession of causeways over the low-lying land. In the rainy season the valley is a sea of mud. In dry weather the elaborate system of irrigation dikes can be breached with the same effect. With the causeways blown up, with air and land troops pecking away at him, an invader would have little chance for a flanking movement. If he turned to the east, he would be in country still largely unexplored, with few and primitive roads. If he turned to the west and south he would have to travel through narrow valleys. But if he should break through to a point 70 miles north of Manila--whether through marshes or mountains--he would have Manila and the Philippines in dire peril. For from that point the roads are broad and straight, the country fair and dry.

Batangas Bay, 50 miles south of Manila, would be a second good place to attack, for two reasons : the water is so deep that the largest ships can anchor close inshore; and it is near Manila. But from the beachhead the roads pass through slits in the mountains, cross deep defiles over bridges that could be destroyed. And, since it is closer to the capital, a heavy defending force could quickly be moved south to fend off attack at the beach itself.

Of all the three logical attack points on the island, Manila Bay is the most obvious. Therefore it is the most heavily fortified. Centre of its fortification is the island of Corregidor. Americans in Manila boast that Corregidor is the most strongly fortified point in the world, stouter than Gibraltar or Blakan Mati, Britain's strong point at Singapore. But, unlike Blakan Mati, which is part of a defense organized in depth, Corregidor, like Gibraltar, stands alone. If an enemy captured it, he would have the works.

Corregidor. Four miles long and a mile wide, Corregidor stands squarely in the twelve-mile mouth of Manila Bay. Its rock formations, rising to 649 ft. from the water, are honeycombed with three defense levels, each equipped with great batteries of guns -- 6-and 12-inchers, in addition to antiaircraft. Connecting the positions are great tunnels through which trucks can be driven. Hollowed out of the hill is a hospital, and caches for ammunition, spare parts, fuel and food for Corregidor's garrison. Atop the hill are an Army post, a golf course, a parade ground. Corregidor would be a tough nut to crack, but it would have to be cracked before any naval commander would try to steam into the bay.

Self-defense. Of late months the U. S. Army has quietly added to its defense force of 10,000 under the command of leather-faced Major General George Grunert; and now & then the Navy announces that a few submarines, a few patrol planes have joined Tommy Hart's Asiatic Fleet. Back of these primary defenses stands a newer and more questionable one: the Filipino army. Preparing for independence, the Commonwealth hired (reputedly at $50,000 a year) a crack professional soldier to raise and train an army. The job went to General Douglas MacArthur, onetime Chief of Staff of the U. S. Army and son of an Army general officer who once bossed the Philippines as Military Governor. The result of Philippine Field Marshal MacArthur's four years of hard work is still a tactical question mark. The Filipino army consists of 20,000 regular troops and 130,000 reservists who have each received five and a half months of hard training. Its junior officers are graduates of the new Philippine Military Academy at Baguio, modeled on West Point. The army is still short of modern equipment, a shortage that is dependent, like the rest of the U. S. war effort, on production in the U. S.

Question mark though it is, the Philippine native army may well be the deciding factor, if invasion should come to the islands. Most of the U. S. Army's 10,000 would be concentrated to defend Corregidor and man the pip-squeak air defenses (less than 100 first-line planes) now on the island. The Filipinos themselves must be prepared to fight delaying actions through the Visayans or furnish the bulk of resistance if an invading force should get a foothold on Luzon.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.