In northern Burma the Japanese were all but washed up. There was no continuous frontthere could be none across the forbidding north-south ridges. But between the ridges, four Allied armies were probing southward like the fingers of a hand; another, like an opposed thumb, was flexing southwestward from China's Yunnan Province. The enemy was fighting only rearguard actions. Obviously he was falling back upon his supply bases in central Burma.
Last week the first finger of the Allied hand jabbed deepest into the softening Japanese defenses. At its tip were jungle-wise troops of the...