AMERICAN CONVOYS

Evening Star, Issue 23880, 9 May 1941, Page 7

AMERICAN CONVOYS

AGITATION FOR USE OF NAVY PRESIDENT URGED TO ACT RESPONSIBLE LEADERS' VIEWS Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyr-gn*. NEW YORK, -May 8. Mr Wendell Willkie, addressing ‘ a freedom rally in Madison Square Garden, said': “ 1 care not whether you call the safe delivery of cargoes convoying, patrolling with aeroplane accompaniment, or what not, we want those cargoes protected at once with less talk and more action. There is no reason for despair. The British still control the seas and can draw on the world’s resources. Furnish Britain with the ships she needs until it hurts; give her destroyers; and see that those ships deliver their cargoes' safely to British ports.” The rally telegraphed President, Roosevelt urging him as leader of a free people to execute their will and provide the machines and materials so sorely needed for the defence of freedom and to ensure that they were not consigned to the bottom of the sea. Colonel Knox, Minister of the Navy, in a speech at the booksellers’ 'banquet in Washington, said that all the American resources are committed to the supreme purpose of ensuring that British sea power will not be destroyed. “We arc living in fearful danger, and our only safety is to supplement Britain’s forces, because non-maintenance of a bridge of ships to Britain would mean that we would eventually face an immeasurably superior combination of the Italian, German, and French Navies, and at the same time guard against Japan in the Pacific.” Colonel Knox added: “ Oceans are not bulwarks, but avenues of attack.” Commentators point out that this is the first official reference to the possibility of Germany using the French Navy. The Axis is still raging against Mr Stimson, whom it. describes as the worst American warmonger.