The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1943. POST-WAR CONTROL OF PACIFIC

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 35, 11 February 1943, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1943. POST-WAR CONTROL OF PACIFIC

ALONE among the Powers of the world, the United States possesses the geographical position, the size and population and the industrial resources which enable it, if it wishes, to impose its will in determining the future in the Pacific. Its predominance, evident now, is likely to be overwhelming by the end of the war, when Japan will have been defeated and with its defeat the sole challenge in the Pacific to American sea and air power will have been removed. All indications of the use that the United States is likely to make of this predominant position are therefore important, more particularly if they are indications from official sources. Such an indication is the statement made by Colonel Knox, Secretary to the Navj r , to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives. He told that committee that the United States must retain, after the war, a "network of air and naval bases, and he considered that negotiations to obtain these bases should be opened without delay. The importance of this statement depends upon the degree to which it gains the acceptance of Republicans as well as Democrats, of the party which Quite conceivably, will make the peace, as well as the party which is responsible for waging the war. The difference that can be brought about by a change of administration was unforgettably demonstrated to the world after the last war, when President Wocdrow Wilson s policy was repudiated. At present American policy is shaped by President Roosevelt and the group around him, men. who, in the words of an English commentator, are "convinced that the only hope for the world lies in a broad and liberal internationalism on a democratic basis, a structure of which British-American co-operation must be the hard core" But this is not the steadfast conviction of all Americans, and some of those who do not share it, who repudiate it, gained seats in Congress at the last election. What the Secretary of the Navy says m 1943 may not be supported by the Secretary of the Navy in 1940, for by then there may be a new President, a new Administration and a new Secretary. However even an isolationist Administration at Washington would be likely to heed the counsel of naval and air advisers when their advice crystallised lessons learned bitterly and expensively in war. Such advice will undoubtedly tend to insist on the necessity of the United States' completely controlling and adequately developing, in peacetime, bases throughout the Pacific. Such a policy would be welcomed in principle by other countries in the Pacific, countries which now are largely dependent for their continued security on American naval and air power. The question that naturally arises is what Colonel Knox means by "complete control." The United States, by agreement with .Britain, acquired virtually complete control of areas on which it proceeded to develop bases on several islands off the Atlantic coast. Such control does not extend to the areas in which the base sites were leased; British administration of the remainder of each island continues. Negotiations for similar arrangements in the Pacific could probably be opened, and completed, without undue difficulty. It would be another matter if the policy were that advocated by the Chicago Tribune, the policy of "retention of all the islands we have occupied," in which it included, specifically, New Caledonia, the Solomons, and Fiji.