DISPUTED ISLES

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 69, 18 September 1930, Page 26

DISPUTED ISLES

AMERICA'S ATTITUDE

CLAIMS TO STAND

Light is thrown on the position of the United States, concerning the land claims which it makes in the Antarctic by a dispatch recently send to the "New Yovk Times" by its Washington correspondent. Legitimate American claims to territory in the Antarctic and elsewhere will be supported by Secretary Stinison, according to statements made at the State Department, says this message. Mr. Stiinson, it was stated, had no intention of abandoning any interest the United States may have in the Antarctic as the result of the explora- j tions of Bear-Admiral Byrd or other American naval officers who preceded him, while the State Department is preparing to investigate the status of fifty islands scattered through the Pacific, the South Seas, and the Caribbean. Mr. Stimson did not comment on the resolution of Senator Tydings, directing the President to claim the regions in the.. Antarctic that Americans have discovered, as he has not had an opportunity to study it. He stated that inquiries have come to him from Government Departments concerning the status of; islands in the Pacific and .elsewhere, and that.a comprehensive .report on the subject has been suggested.- ■: The Interior Department administers the Hawaiian group, the War Department supervises the Philippines and Porto Bieo, while the Navy Department is custodian for a variety of small islands. In addition there are a number of small islands claimed by the United States that have no administration. Tli ere are only twenty-five inhabitants on Midway Islands, which serve only as a cable station in the Pacific. Other islands which are not administered by the navy, although of interest to the Department, and occasionally visited by naval vessels, are the uninhabited Wake Island in the mid-Pacific, the uninhabited Howland and Baker Islands in the Pacific, and Swan Island in the Caribbean. All of these are of value as outposts, and some are import; ant for lighthouses or cable or radio stations. In. many cases there is no dispute of American ownership, while in others the sovereignty is'iibt'clear. Eoneador Cay, for example, is'important as an approach to the Panama- Canal, from which a foreign Power might operate submarines in time of war without making a clear-cut breach of neutrality if the ownership were not definitely settled. - -. Somewhat similar is the caso of Christmas Island, south of the Hawaiian group.' This and several others in the vicinity have been claimed by Great Britain. No: formal protest has been made by the United States except that in the case of Christmas Island this country reserved all questions that might grow out of the occupation. Another unsettled - question of sovereignty between the United States arid Great Britain concerns Howland and Baker Islands in' tho midPacific.