Wirarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1943. BASES IN THE PACIFIC.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 November 1943, Page 2

Wirarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1943. BASES IN THE PACIFIC.

MANY New Zealanders, as well as Australians, no doubt will agree with the ‘‘Sydney Suu” that it would be inteicsting to know exactly what was in the, mind of the chairman ol* the United States House of Representatives Naval Affairs! Committee, Mr Warren Magnuson, when he spoke the other day of America’s “need, to retain Australian-ami New Zealand! bases after the war.” American ideas on this subject may have; been influenced by the fact that bases in some British territories in the West Indies and on. the Atlantic seaboard of North America have been leased to the United States for a long term of years.

A similar arrangement, it may be supposed, is hardly likely to be suggested by any responsible United States authority where the British Pacific Dominions are concerned. The ‘‘Sydney Sun,” however, perhaps did not state the position in the happiest terms when it said that: —

The Australian people .would not consent to abandon Commonwealth sovereignty on one square inch of Australian foreshore, but would most freely and gladly giv e full facilities in all their ports and bases for any operations securing the peace of the Pacific.

Australia, and New Zealand, it may be supposed, would refuse to cede bases in their territory to any other nation to be controlled by that nation individually. On. the other hand, the creation of an effective international authority to safeguard peace—the kind of organisation the need for wfiich has been affirmed by the Moscow conference and by both Houses of the United States Congress—might be expected to imply placing strategic bases in the Pacific Dominions and in many other parts of the world under the control of that authority. This would be an. entirely different matter from a relinquishment of sovereignty by one nation in favour of another. It would rather be, as has been observed justly, a pooling ol sovereignty in the common interests of all the nations combining to uphold peace.