NEW MEASURES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 47, 24 January 1939, Page 7

NEW MEASURES.

AMERICA PREPARES

NEW YORK, Jan. 19.

What financiers of Wall Street and politicians of Washington call the “European situation,” with its fears and implications, continues to dominate the share markets as well as the public viewpoint on important questions.

Even the Governor-General of Canada took note this week of what he called the precarious state of international affairs.

New moilerp suns are being installed on Vancouver Harbour, and some of the heaviest guns in existence have already been mounted on the southern end of Vancouver Island, commanding the Straits. This year £10.000,000 sterling has been appropriated, mostly for the Pacific Coast, following consultation with high Admiralty officials and officers of the United States Navy. Last year Britain awarded large aeroplane contracts to United States builders. To-day the first of 200 great Lockheed bombers left Los Angeles, flying to New York, where they will be dismantled and sent by ship to Liverpool. President Roosevelt announced that America’s immediate objective in fighting 'planes was 13,000 adding: “Orders will be placed on such a large scale that it will reduce unit cost and enable machines to bo turned out ill tremendous numbers.” The President’s only fear is lack of trained aeroplane builders, and steps are being taken by a system of apprenticeship to provide greatly increased numbers of them. In liis last two addresses to Congress President Roosevelt clearly sees the end of the policy of neutrality as applied to the United States. The New York Herald-Tribune says that the President divides the world into aggressors and victims and dedicates the United States to active intervention against the former. He indicates a practical means of carrying out tho policy by modification or repeal of the Neutrality Act. Presumably that would be followed up by a far more vigorous use of American economic power against the totalitarians. The Herald-Tribune assumes that Britain and America will be found working in close understanding.