NAVY READY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20619, 21 November 1941, Page 7

NAVY READY

PACIFIC DEFENCE AMERICAN STAND WARNING TO JAPAN LONG-RANGE BLOCKADE (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Reed. Nov. 20, 3 p.m.) LONDON. Nov. 19. “America’s plans for naval co-opera-tion with Britain in the Pacific are now believed to be complete and ready for ‘press-the-button’ application,” says the foreign editor of the Daily Express in a message from Washington. “If the Japanese war lords insist on a show-down, Japan will find herself facing a long-range blockade. The main body of the United States Pacific Fleet would remain outside Japanese waters, while submarines, bombers and light cruisers would harry the Japanese naval supply lines to China and Indo-China.” The Daily Express' foreign editor adds: “When the special Japanese envoy, Mr. Kurusu, and the Ambassador, Admiral Nomura, retired after file longest and most hard-hitting conference in the history of the State Department, -they took with them a stern American warning that a single further step by the Japanese warlords might bring down the Japanese empire under the weight of the strongest coalition of military power the Far East has ever known. , Bargaining Counter

“American opinion attributes Tokio’s ferocity to the Oriental desire to put up a good bargaining counter.” It is authoritatively stated in London that four Japanese cruisers arrived at Saigon. There appears to be no particular reason for the movements of the ships, except as a demonstration of a type of pressure which is likely to recur. The Manila correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain £ays that America’s fast-growing air power in the Philippines has necessitated the requisitioning, of the Nielson airport and other commercial aerodromes. The shuttle air service between the United States and Hawaii will be discontinued on November _3O. One Clipper is to be used for defence purposes.

“I was most impressed by the American attitude to Japan and can say confidently that the United States will not-permit , a change in the Pacific without intervention,” said the Australian, Sir Keith Murdoch, at ■ n Ministry of Information conference at which the whole of the British press was represented. Support to Roosevelt

“America has made up her mind about the Pacific. There is not any doubt that the bulk of the American people are behind the President’s' foreign policy. “I saw and heard enough in America to be able to say confidently that production will go ahead at a tremendous pace. It will not be many months before the aeroplane production will be simply prodigious. The tooling programme for bombers is costing as much as the Panama Canal and the tank programme is costing twice as much as was spent on the Panama Canal.

“On the whole of the production side the people of Britain can rely on a stupendous output by this highly-competent generation of Americans who have mastered the technique of mass production which they apply to all their problems.” In reply to a pressman’s question at Kuibyshev as to whether Russia would share the British attitude in the event of a Japanese-America conflict, the Soviet spokesman, Lozovsky, said the matter was not one for a reply at a press' conference, but it was necessary to remember that the Soviet maintained a policy based on the Russian-Japanese neutrality pact. A Toronto message states that the Canadian press published a story to-day by a businessman who returned to Auckland from Japan. He is quoted as saying that 10 enemy raiders were sheltering in Kobe, including the Scharnhorst. He believed there were others at Yokohama.

A Tokio message says that the Japanese Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Hiroyasu Ino, told Parliament that Japan’s food supplies would last for two years “even in the worst eventuality.”