PACIFIC THREAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 November 1939, Page 6

PACIFIC THREAT

IF HOLLAND WERE INVOLVED IN WAR JAPAN MIGHT SEIZE DUTCH INDIES SOME PERTINENT QUESTIONS RAISED. ATTITUDE OF THE UNITED STATES. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. NEW YORK, November 12. Major George Fielding Eliot, in a copyright message in the “New York Herald-Tri-bune.’’ draws attention to the threat to British and United States’ interests in Ihe Pacific inherent in the involvement of the Netherlands in a European war. which Japan might regard as a eno to seize the Netherlands East indies, thus neutralising Singapore, surrounding the Philippines, and threatening Australia and New Zealand. The attitude of the United States in this connection is difficult to forecast, he says. She might be confronted in the future with the question whether she proposed to defend Australia and New Zealand from Asiatic penetration. The task is easier now than with Japanese established in New Guinea. Major Eliot adds that clearly the results of a German attack on Holland would not be confined to the strategic situation on the Western Front. Certainly the United States is most concerned regarding possessions in the Netherlands West Indios and Guiana, and would assuredly resist a German claim to them. She cannot afford to permit German air and submarine bases in the Caribbean and South America.