THEPACIFIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1939, Page 12

THEPACIFIC

AMERICA'S INTEREST

SOME QUESTIONS OF

DEFENSE

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

VANCOUVER, October 25,

The unofficial statement that Japan has granted Germany permission to establish submarine bases in the Caroline and Marianne Islands has revived the whole question of North Pacific defences. A German naval mission is reported to have arrived at Japan, by way of the Trans-Siberia Railway and Vladivostok. Two weeks before this denouement became known, the United States Navy dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Philippines, followed immediately after by 12 large bombing planes, which flew across the Pacific without mishap. Subsequently, Pearl Harbour, Hawaiian Islands, has been converted into a permanent training area, allowing battleships to be sent there without special announcement. Then came the division of the United States Navy into two forces in a secret battle practice, in which more than 100 ships and 400 planes participated. Included were 10 battleships, 10 cruisers, three aircraft carriers, 11 light cruisers, 43 destroyers, 11 submarines, and 13 auxiliaries and mine sweepers. .. The German-Japanese demarche will assuredly revive the question of fortifying the island of Guam in the Western Pacific, to guarantee the security of the American naval squadron in Asiatic waters and to assurje practical immunity of the Philippines against hostile attack. The proposal to vote 5,000,000 dollars to develop Guam as an air and submarine base was dropped in March last, after a bitter, three-day debate in the House of Representatives at Washington. . .

The right to fortify Guam, which is 3300 nautical miles west: of Hawaii, and only 3350 miles from Yokohama, was relinquished by the United States in 1922, when the Washington Nayal. Treaty prohibited any new . fortifications west of Hawaii, as part of a general settlement of Pacific problems, by which Japan agreed to a mutual limitation of naval strength, and a pledge to respect the integrity of China; By her own choice, Japan permitted the agreement on naval limitation to expire, ancTset out to destroy the integrity of China. In such circumstances, it was held that the United States had plainly recovered the right to fortify Guam; the only question at stake was whether it was good policy to do so. Fortification of the Caroline and Marianne Islands was forbidden by the of Nations when it entrusted Japan with the Mandate over them. The relation between the GermanJapanese coup and the abrogation by the United States, in August last, of its commercial treaty with Japan, signed in 1911, has yet to be clarified. Germany's immediate intention would be to attack British and French interests, trade, and shipping in the East. How far the new axis may develop in furthering Japanese designs to divorce" the Orient from the Occi-, dent is a matter of conjecture., Certain it is, however, that such a plan would be resisted by the United States, which, ( in the light of its present policy, would be prepared to meet force with force.

Charles Crockett, a dock worker at Aberavon, has died from wounds rer ceived at Salonika 22 years ago.

Bath Abbey ha j been attacked by the death-watch beetle and £4000 is needed to replace the timber affected.

Housewives in Cardwell, North Queensland, are hoping that a .giant moth caught in the town recently was the only one of its kind, for it measured .nearly a foot, across.