SPLENDID BARTER

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21214, 10 September 1940, Page 6

SPLENDID BARTER

i DESTROYERS FOR BASES GREAT MUTUAL BENEFITS BROTHERS FOR CENTURIES (United Press Asn.—Elec. Tel. Copyright) LONDON, Sept. 8 Under such headings as “A Happy Agreement,” “A Splendid Barter,” “A Fair Exchange,” weekly papers print considered comment on the lease of sites for defence bases to the United States and the transfer of American destroyers. The New Statesman says it is not a business deal but an imaginative agreement born of the consciousness of a common cause. Each nation recognises that now and in the future it needs and will need the other. Noting that the free lease of sites is for 99 years, it says: “As we read them, they imply for three generations at parallelism in British and American foreign policy. We are brothers-in-arms in war as in peace for centuries to come.” The mutual benefits of the arrangement are stressed by both the Spectator and Time and Tide. The former writes that the striking feature of the arrangement, indeed, is that each party benefits as much by what it gives as by what it gets, and argues that that kind of accord is only possible between two Governments which start on terms of unclouded friendship and which repose complete confidence in one another. The Economist observes that the first anniversary of the outbreak of war has been celebrated by something far more effective than oratory. The greatest benefit of the arrangements, in the opinion of this journal, is the evidence they give of the way in which Britain and America complement each other’s defensives—the manner in which events have brought a clearer insight on both sides of the Atlantic. There could not be a clearer example of genuine reciprocity than this exchange. Strategic Importance The strategic importance to the defence of the common interest afforded by the naval and air bases leased by Britain to America is appreciated when it is realised how effective is the control which can be exercised by adequate naval and air forces stationed at the places embraced 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 which provides an outlet for the Great Lakes. With their connecting canals and rivers, the lakes extend for nearly 500 miles into the interior of Canada, in one continuous line of navigation. Together they furnish for seven months in the year an inlet into the Atlantic from the heart of the 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. It lies on the flanks of important trade routes between Britain and Canada and Britain and the United States, and on other ocean highways leading to the West Indies and the Panama Canal. Caribbean Sea Further south the Bahamas cover the Florida Channel and Windward Passage, the northern entrances of the Great Antilles into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Naval and air bases in Cuba and San Domingo are already available, while Porto Rico and some of the smaller islands round it guarding the 150 miles Mona Passage into the Caribbean are American possessions. Jamaica, however, some 200 miles south-west of Win ward Passage, between Haiti and Cuba, is less than 600 miles from the Panama Canal and excellently situated to assist in its seaward defence.

Antigua and St. Lucia, in the Lesser Antilles, and Trinidad, cover the approaches to 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 Maraccaibo, in Venezuela. The chain of American defences will be completed by the naval and air base to be established near Georgetown, in British Guiana, on the northern coast of South America, about 350 miles from Trinidad.