BY CASH THEY CONQUER

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5319, 4 February 1947, Page 4

BY CASH THEY CONQUER

QNE of the most interesting features of the post-war set-up is the consistency with which the United States of America and Russia have sought to extend their territorial spheres of influence, while the British Government has been loosening the ties of Empire with the Colonial Office with even greater readiness. A few days ago, came a cabled , announcement, which has neither been confirmed' nor denied by the supposed principals, that the United States was negotiating for the purchase from Denmark of the world's largest island, Greenland, for one thousand million dollars, the price Denmark is supposed to have put on a country which has suddenly assumed great strategical significance. Incidentally, although the Icelandic Parliament refused point-blank to ' discuss the cession of permanent bases, American troops are still on that island. . — It is interesting to recall that the last deal made by America in real estate, if we exclude that for British Atlantic bases during the war, was with Denmark in 1917, when the three islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands group of the West Indies, totalling but 132 square miles in area, were secured for 25 million dollars. The Danes thought the deal quite a good one until it was let drop that Washington had been prepared to go as high as 40 million for these bases, which includes one of the fmest harbours in the West Indies. Cash has had almost as much to do with the territorial expansion of the United States as cannon. The aetual area settled by the American colonists at the close of the Revolutionary War in 1783 was a strip on the eastern seaboard, not mo^e t.han 200 miles wide, from Mame in the north to Savannah in the south, but the land recognised by Great Britain as being under the sovereignty of the original 13 States was all that area east of the Mississippi. The ceding by France in 1803 of the Province of Louisiana- s.tretched the new Republic's sphere of influence as far west as Yellowstone Park, to the 49th Parallel in the north. Thus, in 20 years, the United States was doubled in area. Florida was added from Spain in 1819. The annexation of Texas in 1845 and the cession by Mexico of the rest of the country as far as the coast of California three years later, practically completed the establishment of the United States in its present form. British claims to Idaho and Oregon had been extinguished by negotiation in 1846. The Gadsden Purchase secured southern Arizona- from Mexico in 1858. Alaska and the Aleutians were ' transf erred by Russia in 1867 for a cash con•sideration of ten million dollars. The Spanish War of 1899 added the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam to the American sphere, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) were annexed in 1898 and American Samoa wa§ ac~ quired in ' 1900. Minor annexations were of Howland and Baker Islands (1857), Midway (1867) and Wake Island (1899). In the nature of things, a deal with Canada will be discussed in the not distant future by the well-established dollar 'diplomacy.