AMERICAN DEFENCE PLANS

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 125, 20 February 1941, Page 7

AMERICAN DEFENCE PLANS

Purpose Of Samoan Base WASHINGTON, February 18. Congressional naval experts . state that the Administration’s decision to construct an 8,000,009-dollar naval and air base at Samoa was intended to be a guarantee against a surprise approach to Hawaii and tlie Panama Canal by the South Pacific. They said also that it had implications in the United States’s Far Eastern diplomacy. The United States desired to show Japan a completely altered public sentiment regarding naval policy in the Pacific. President Roosevelt said lie would announce within a week a home defence programme outlining a plan whereby every man and woman would tie enabled to make a contribution to defence. Mr. Roosevelt, said United States destroyer production had been greatly speeded up. The navy at. present was geared to produce destroyers in .1— to 15 months instead of 20 or 30 as heretofore. As the result, of Mr. Roosevelts discussions with Mr. Harry Hopkins the Agricultural Department has started a survey to determine what food supplies could be sent abroad in the event of Mr. Roosevelt deciding to make the United States a larder for the Democracies.

Mr. Roosevelt has issued executive orders establishing naval defence areas around Alaskan, Pacific and Caribbean sites where new defence bases may be located, including the islands of Palmvra, Johnson, Midway, Wake, Kingman Reef, Rose, Tutuila and Guam. 'The orders close these areas to commercial vessels, and prohibit non-mili-tary aircraft from flying over them. Mr. William Bullitt in an address urged the stepping-up of the defence programme. He said: "If the Germans by controlling the air be victorious, the Nazi dream of a German super race ruling a world of unarmed slaves might well become a reality. . . . The United States is not yet producing at war speed. If we willed the end and willed the means we could double the number of planes that we now plan to produce in 1942.”

Strikes in the defence industries have increased to 18, one of which was marked by the first outbreak of violence on the defence labour front. Police and non-strikers clashed with pickets entering the Richmond plant of the International Harvester Company. Negotiations again broke down at Allis Chalmers’ plant in Milwaukee where production has been tied up for 28 days on 40,000,000 dollars’ worth of defence orders.