ISLAND BASES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 September 1940, Page 9

ISLAND BASES

THE BRITISH LEASES TO AMERICA DEFENCE OF THE COMMON INTEREST. STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 8. The strategic importance to the defence of the common interest afforded by the naval and air bases leased by Britain to America can be appreciated when it is realised how effective is the control which can be exercised by adequate naval and-air forces stationed at the places comprised in the agreement. Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas. Jamaica, St Lucia, Trinidad, Antigua and British Guiana form a complete strategic chain. .< Newfoundland lies athwart the Gulf of St Lawrence and the river of the same name which provides the outlet for the vast series of inland waters comprised by Lakes Ontario. Erie. Huron, Michigan and Superior. With the connecting canals and rivers they extend for nearly 500 miles into the interior of Canada in one line of continuous navigation inland. Lake Michigan, with a length of 316 miles, lies wholly in the United States. Otherwise the international boundary passes through their centres and together they furnish for seven months in the year an inlet into the Atlantic from the heart of western United States and Canada. Bermuda consists of a cluster of about 100 small islands, some 16 of which are inhabited. About 580 miles from the nearest point of the American coast and 730 miles from Halifax. Nova Scotia, Bermuda has long been a British naval base. Lying on the Hanks of important trade routes between Britain, Canada and the United States on the one hand and on the other the ocean highways leading to the West Indies and the Panama Canal, the islands’ strategic importance is clear.

Further south, the Bahamas cover the Florida channel and the Windward Passage, the northern entrances of the Greater Antilles into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Naval and air bases in Cuba and San Domingo are already available to us, while Porto Rico and some smaller islands around it, guarding the 150mile “Mona Passage” into the Caribbean are American possessions.

Jamaica, however, some 200 miles south-west of the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba, is less than 600 miles from the Panama Canal and excellently situated to assist in its sea* ward defence.

Antigua and St Lucia in the Lesser Antilles and Trinidad cover the western approaches to the Panama Canal, roughly 1300 miles away, together with the Dutch islands of Curacao and Aruba, which are of importance because of their oil supplies, obtained from Maracaibo, in Venezuela. The chain of American defences will be completed by a naval and air base to be established near Georgetown in British Guiana on the northern coast of South America, about 350 miles from Trinidad.

Well may it be said that the agreement is a matter for congratulation. It has been welcomed all over the British Empire as a substantial sign of the friendship and sympathetic interest which exists between the two great English-speaking democracies of the modern world.