NEW SEA ROUTE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 80, 16 January 1936, Page 6

NEW SEA ROUTE.

OPENING BY THE SOVIET. COMMUNICATION WITH EAST. (United Press Association—Copyright.) LONDON, January 14. The Moscow correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" says that, remembering that Rc-zhdestvensky's Grand Fleet, after falling foul of the Dogger Bank fishing-boats, steamed round Southern Europe and Asia to meet disastrous defeat by Japan in the battle of Tsushima, the Soviet is determined to shorten its lines of communication by using the north-east passage. This is regarded as the only strategically safe route in the event of another war between Russia and Japan. It involves traversing the terrible Behring Straits through 8000 miles of permanently ice-strewn waters. Professor Schmidt (chief of the Northern Sen. Routes Department) announces that no cost will be spared to open up the north-east passage at the earliest possible time. Six merchant ships, during the short coming summer, will sail from the east and from the west with 280,000 tons of cargo, exclusive of coal for those going eastward, and four attendant icebreakers. The undertaking will be very costly. The Chelyuskin foundered in Behring Straits in 1933, but cargo boats convoyed by ice-breakers penetrated from east to west in 1935.