APPROVAL IN LONDON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 September 1940, Page 5

APPROVAL IN LONDON

AGREEMENT WELCOMED EXCHANGE OF NOTES. AMBASSADOR & MR HULL. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.25 a.m.) RUGBY, September 3. The announcement of the successful conclusion of an agreement between Britain and the United States regarding the lease of air

and naval bases in British transAtlantic territories, and the trans-

fer to Britain of fifty United States Navy destroyers, is warmly welcomed here as representing a practical method whereby each country is able to contribute materially and effectively to the defence requirements of the other.

The agreement is announced here in a command paper containing an exchange of Notes dated September 2 between Lord Lothian (British Ambassador) and Mr Cordell Hull (American Secretary of State). In his Note Lord Lothian says: “In view of the basis of friendship and sympathetic interest of the British Government in the United States, in the national security of the United States and in its desire to strengthen the ability of the United States to co-operate effectively with the other nations of the Americas in the defence of the Western Hemisphere, the British Government will secure and grant to the Government of the United States, freely and without consideration, leases for the immediate .establishment and use of naval and air bases and facilities for entrance thereto and the. operation and protection thereof, on the Avalon Peninsula and on the southern coast of Newfoundland and on the east coast and on the Great Bay of Bermuda. Furthermore, in view of the above and in view of the desire of the United States to acquire additional air and naval bases in the Caribbean and British Guiana, and without endeavouring to place any monetary or commercial value upon the many tangible and intangible rights and properties involved, the British Government will make available to the United States for immediate establishment and use naval and air bases and facilities for the entrance thereto and operation and protection thereof on the eastern side of the Btihamas, the southern coast of Jamaica, the west coast of Saint Lucia, the west coast of Trinidad, in the Gulf of Paria, in the island of Antigua and in British Guiana, within fifty miles of Georgetown, in exchange for naval and military equipment and material which the United States will transfer to the British Government. All the bases and facilities referred to in the preceding paragraphs will be leased to the United States for niriety-nine years, free of all rent charges other than such compensation to be mutually agreed on, to be paid by the United States in order to compensate owners of private property for loss by appropriation or damage arising out of the establishment of the bases and facilities in question.”