CHAIRMAN REBUKED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 2 May 1935, Page 7

CHAIRMAN REBUKED

MILITARY MATTERS IN U.S.A. PUBLICATION OF EVIDENCE RESENTED BY ROOSEVELT (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) WASHINGTON, 30th April. President .Roosevelt took what is believed to be unprecedented action to-day by invoking his power as Connnander-in-Chief of the army to rebuke the chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee for publishing the testimony of Brigadier-General Charles Kilbourne, until recently assistant chief of staff pertaining to neutrality of nearby territory in the event of war , emergency. In recent hearings Brigadier-General Kilbourne. declared that it might- be necessary to seize British and French islands in the Atlantic to prevent the enemy utilising them as air bases. The president flatly repudiated such intentions, but apparently the part of Kilbourne’s testimony which he found mdst annoying was the reference to the “camouflaged” section of the Air Base Bill under consideration, which would build a military aviation base near' the Canadian border under the guise of an “intermediate station for trans-contin-ental flights.” President Roosevelt’s letter to Chairman McSwain declared that hereafter such testimony must either be kept secret or presented to him for approval before being published. “I desire to inform the committee that certain portions of the testimony of BrigadierGeneral Kilborne, especially those relating to the Canadian border, do not represent tbo policy of the Administration or the Commander-in-chief. Nor do they reflect the views, purposes or motives of the United States Government. This Government does not envisage any possibility of a change in the friendly relations between the United States and any foreign country. The Government accepts as an accomplished fact the peace conditions cemented by many generations of friendsliip between Canadian and the American people, and expects permanently to live up to the letter as well as the spirit of the treaties relating to permanent disarmament on the boundary.”