DESTROYER ISSUE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 205, 29 August 1940, Page 6

DESTROYER ISSUE.

THE CHANNEL NEED.

U.S. VIEWS AND FEARS. (By JOSEPH ALSOP and ROBERT KINTNER.) WASHINGTON, August 4. Although interested parties have sedulously tried to confuse the issue, the facts of the English destroyer problem- are fairly simple. If England is not to be defeated, the English Channel must be held. To hold the Channel, destroyers are vitally necessary, both because larger craft cannot manoeuvre in such,narrow waters, and because the strongest navy in the world is tactically impotent without an attendant destroyer flotilla- And German air and submarine attacks have been picking off England's destroyers at an alarming rate. Both American and English naval authorities agree that the time may come very soon when England will have to obtain additional destroyers, or face the possible loss of the Channel. Thus the time is already at hand when the central issue of American national policy must be squarely met by the national leaders. The American Navy has over 300 destroyers, or more than all the other navies in the world put together. American and English naval authorities also agree that fifty destroyers will meet England's need. The question is whether to make the destroyers available, or to risk a total German victory. Only a third of the destroyers England has lost are actually sunk. The other two-thirde are in harbour for re* pairs. Before long large numbers of new. English destroyers will be sliding-down the ways, under the building programme. started at the beginning of the war. The fifty destroyers, for which trained crews are available in England, will keep the English going until the rate of destroyer construction and repair catches up with the rate at which destroyers are being damaged or sunk. England, at Even Odds. Those who are trying to confuse the destroyer issue have concentrated, of course, on disseminating the idea that England is beaten already, and that aiding England now is throwing good money after bad. Recently, for example, reference was publicly made to an American Ambassador close to the President, now home on leave, who positively predicted the English would be beaten by November. The reference-seenied to point direct to William C. Bullitt, since no other American diplomat qualified to judge England's chances fits the description. Yet if the Ambassador referred to was Bullitt, he must be talking in very different ways to different people,

for he has made precisely the opposite prediction to most people with whom he lias t ilked.

Ai ;ially, the competent judges in the War and Navy /Departments believe that if England gets the destroyers, her chances will be at least even. Thus the issue presents iteelf in rather definite form. Is this country to bet fifty destroyers on England at even odds? Or are we to sit paseively by, acknowledging our interest* are deeply Involved in the struggle, yet refusing to lift a finger to affect the outcome?

Unanimous Opinion.

That is the way the choice before the country is put by the high American officials best able to judge the matter. Another widely disseminated theory is that the service men in the Navy are flatly opposed to letting so much as a rowboat cross the Atlantic. This may be true of men in the lower ranks, who are not required to think in terms of good strategy. But the highest naval officers join the President, and virtually every other man in the Government to whom the facts are known, in firmly believing that the needed destroyers ought to be made promptly available. It was a naval authority who put the situation most clearly. -

"It's a difficult step," he said, "but it's the best way I know of serving our own national welfare. Under those circumstances, difficulties ought not to count." There are, of course, great difficulties in the way, both political and legal, domestic and international. Yet unless most of the wisest men in the American Government have gone collectively mad, the price of inaction might be frightful indeed.

The price of inaction might be German victory. One item in the price would be the loss of the British Navy, without whose help in the Atlantic we cannot be sure of defending this hemisphere. Other items would be the transformation of Europe into a Gerni«n-dominated slave State, the transformation of the British colonies into this slave State's slavemanaged store-houses, and the domination of world trade by Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan. Adding , the items up, it is not surprising that the State, War and Navy Departments are united in preferring any other risk to the risk of paying such a price. The surprise, rather, lies in the fact that an effort to tackle the problem of the destroyers hae been so long delayed.—N.A.N.A.