AMERICAN SECURITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 131, 30 November 1936, Page 8

AMERICAN SECURITY

STRONG NAVY URGED

NO FOREIGN ENTANGLEMENTS

{From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, November 4. The announcement that Hie United States Government intends to utron*!IJien tlie naval base at Hawaii, and to ! build a new base at Puerto Rico, after having voted the largest army, navy, and air appropriations in peace-time history, interprets faithfully the great body of: American opinion, convinced that this country should, in future, avoid taking part in "wars of aggression," and utilise its resources of man-, ! power and equipment only in defence of these shores. Since Europe became unsettled in the past two years, Congressmen, publicists, editors, clergymen, women, as well as pacifist societies, have been unanimous in expounding this viewthat it is better national policy to build a fence around America, and isolate it from war, than carry the attack into the quarter of a possible enemy. America, they say, is better 'adapted to keeping out of war than any other nation. To them the Span-ish-American war was a mistake, and the worst consequences of ' German victory in the Great War would have been nothing to what America has suffered as a result of "winning the war." The spokesman of this group—if they need a spokesman—is General Hagood, a noted, writer on war topics, who commanded the Lines of Communication for America in France. Congress was profoundly impressed by his views when he appeared before various committees during the Roosevelt regime. He regards American: intervention in the Great War as a blunder. THE SEPARATING OCEAN. "The Atlantic Ocean is a good deal, wider than the Marne," he said. "You cannot swim a horse across it. We did not find it so easy to get our troops and supplies to France, although we were practically unmolested. At the beginning of 1918, we had only 200,000 men in France, and, when the Armistice was signed, we had not yet caught up with our supplies. Had we spent a small sum on our own defences, "we could have remained at home and faced the world. without fear. America is in just as much or just as little danger of war today as in 1914. We should stay at home and attend to our own affairs, build a fence around our property, warn everybody to keep out, and back up that warning by force. Let it be known that Uncle Sam has a shotgun handy in case an ugly dog comes into the yard or a bull into the pasture." A navy second to none, capable of defending a frontier, from Newfoundland to the Caribbean group, including Cuba and Haiti, and to Panama, Honolulu, and Alaska, is urged by General Hagood, He suggests a system of harbour defences that would seal the principal ports against all foreign forces, and that would- serve as bases, arsenals, revictualling, and refitting stations for the fleet; an air force of reasonable size, up to date, organised for rational • defence; and an army, not on^ European lines, but essentially defensive, on lines laid down in the Constitution to repel invasion. PRACTICAL ISOLATION. "We Americans do not have to fight to improve our condition," he said. "We have already secured all the land we want or could use with advantage, all the liberty of action we need in nolitics>and religion. We do not have to fight for foreign trade. We consume practically all that we produce. We depend, of course, on the foreign maz'ket to dispose of certain of our surplus products, such as cotton, but in this our interests do not conflict with those of others. Those who want our stuff can get it; those who don't can leave it alone. No other nation in the world is so well off—not even Great Britain, with all her colonies." For reasons such as this, Americans are being urged to avoid foreign entanglements, pray for peace, and keep their powder dry. .