CANADA’S DEFENCE

Grey River Argus, 10 September 1940, Page 6

CANADA’S DEFENCE

BIG INCREASE In Air and on Land (Received September 9, 5.5 p.m.) WASHINGTON, September 8. The Foreign Policy Association, reporting on Canada’s war potentialities, noted that on July 24 the Air Force included 1765 officers and 17,688 airmen. Twenty-1 wo schools were operating under the Empire Scheme, under which 1216 officers, 10,524 other ranks, 2298 civilians, and 2643 pupils were training, being an increase of seventy-nine per cent, in two months. The Canadian Army increased from 90,973 on June 10 to 154,000 on Aug---ust 21, of which number forty thousand were abroad. At the end of July Canada had 113 vessels, with nearly nine thousand officers and men. Shipyards were constructing eighteen minesweepers and sixty-four anti-submar-ine vessels, and two destroyers were being built, while three liners were being converted to armed cruisers. Anglo-U.S. Agreement STRONG DEFENCE CHAIN FOR THE AMERICAS (Received September 9, 6. p.m.) RUGBY, September 8. The strategic importance to the defence of the common interest afforded by the naval and air bases leased by Britain to America .is appreciated when it is realised how effective is the control which can be exercised by adequate naval and air forces stationed at the places comprised in the agreement. Newfoundland, Bermuda, Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Antigua and British Guiana form a complete strategic chain. Newfoundland lies athwart the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the river of the same name, which provides an outlet for a vast series of inland waters comprised by Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior. With the connecting canals and rivers, they extend for nearly five hundred miles into the interior of Canada in one line of continuous navigation inland.

Lake Michigan with a length of 316 miles lies wholly in the United States; otherwise the international boundary passes through the centres, and together they furnish for seven months in the year an inlet into the Atlantic from the heart of western United States and Canada. Bermuda consists of a cluster of about a hundred small islands, some sixteen of which are inhabited, about 580 miles from the nearest point of the American coast and 730 miles from Halifax (Nova Scotia). Ber-, muda has long been a British naval base lying on the flanks of important trade routes between Britain, Canada and the United States on the one hand, and, on the other ocean highways leading to the West Indies and the Panama Canal. That the islands are of strategic importance is clear. Further south the Bahamas cover the Florida Channel ana the Windward passage to the northern entrances fiom the Greater Antilles into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Naval and air bases in Cuba and San Domingo are already available to us, while Porto Rico and some smaller islands around it, guarding the 150 miles “Mona Passage” into the Caribbean Sea, are American possessions. JAMAICA’S IMPORTANCE Jamaica, however, some two hundred miles south-west of the Windward passage between Haiti and Cuba, is less than six hundred miles from the Panama Canal, and is ex cellently situated to assist in its seaward 'defence. Antigua and St. Lucia, in the Lesser Antilles and Trinidad, cover the western approaches to the Panama Canal, roughly 1300 miles away, together with the Dutch islands of Curacao and Aruba, which are of importance because of their oil supplies obtained from Maraccaibo in Venezuela. The chain of American defences wiil be completed by the naval and air base to be established neat Georgetown, in British Guiana, on the northern coast of South America, about 350 miles from Trinidad. Well may it be said that the agreement is a matter for congratulations. It has been welcomed all over the British Empire as a substantial sign of the friendship and sympathetic interest which exists between '.he two great English-speak ing democracies of the modern world.