SOBERING INFLUENCE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22586, 15 March 1948, Page 5

SOBERING INFLUENCE

BRITISH CRUISER’S VOYAGE NO TENSION IN ANTARCTIC LONDON, March 12. The special correspondent of the Times on board the sloop Snipe, which, with the cruiser Nigeria, has returned to Port Stanley after a nine-day cruise, during which they took Sir Miles Clifford, Governor of the Falkland Islands, on a tour of the bases illegally established by Argentina I ''and Chile in the United Kingdom sector of the Antarctic, says the aim of the operation was not to intimidate Argentinians and Chileans as implied in certain alarmist circles. This would merely have helped Argentina and Chile to claim that they were the injured parties. Its purpose was rather to give proof of Britain's serious interest in the area and to stabilise the situation where an unequal balance of naval power might possibly in the future prompt rash action. The correspondent adds: “The dignified and friendly behaviour of the British officers, both in the delivery and receipt of the numerous protests exchanged, was in welcome contrast to efforts of nationalist circles in Buenos Aires and Santiago to work up tension over the area. This tension does not exist in the Antarctic iself, where reason and the habits of civilised man seem to find survival easier than in warmer climates.”