DEFENCE & PEACE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 August 1938, Page 7

DEFENCE & PEACE

UNITED STATES PLANS NAVAL AND MILITARY EXPANSION STRATEGIC BASES IN ALASKA PRESIDENT ON ESTABLISHMENT OF SAFEGUARDS By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. WASHINGTON August 28. With an eye on Europe’s gloomy war clouds, the Navy Department has drafted an impressive tentative construction programme for 1939. It includes one or two battleships, additional to the six already appropriated, four cruisers, six destroyers, six to eight submarines and the enlistment of 5000 men.

The most significant development is a recommendation that the battleships be of 45,000 tons. The plans for these are near completion, and it is anticipated that President Roosevelt will consent if he is satisfied that Japan is exceeding the treaty limits. The construction of an 18,000-ton aircraft-carrier is also under consideration, but postponment until 1940 is probable. If President Roosevelt approves the programme, it will be submitted to Congress in January. The Navy Deartment has also worked out a 10-year construction plan to implement the decision made by the last Congress to increase. underage ships 20 per cent over the VinsonTrammel Treaty limit. The Army is also seeking 10,000,000 dollars to establish an air base in Alaska,': supplementing the defensive measures proposed by the navy to protect the shortest route to the Orient. Mr Louis Johnson, Assistant-Secre-tary for Air, has now returned from an aerial survey of Alaska, where he inspected air-base sites, also five routes for a 2200-mile all-weather road across British Columbia from Seattle to Fairbanks, Alaska. Fairbanks is reported to be suitable for training purposes, but fog over the encircling mountains tends to isolate the area from the sea. Alternative bases are suggested at Juneau or Gustaffson’s Point. Growing realisation of Alaska’s strategic importance is indicated by the recent establishment of a seaplane base at Sitka and a request to Congress for a 5,000,000-dollar base at Kodiak Island, and the dispatch of 60 seaplanes to Alaska for summer training. The trans-Pacific route, via Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, is 1400 miles shorter than via Hawaii. Meanwhile, President Roosevelt, in a letter to the editor of the “Army and Navy Journal,” published in its seventy-first anniversary number, declares that, besides developing adequate defence forces, it is the Government’s obligation to use vigorously its good offices in promoting world peace. “As others decrease their armaments,” says the letter, “we will gladly join them by reducing those which the present world conditions force us to provide for our own protection. ■Nothing we have done contemplates aggression. Nothing goes beyond what is necessary to establish proper safeguards.”