Nelson Evening Mail WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 1943 AMERICA’S MOTIVES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 10 March 1943, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 1943 AMERICA’S MOTIVES

OUT of the current discussion and misrepresentation about Pacific bases emerges the encouraging fact that the United States after the war is prepared to take the lion’s share in maintaining peace in the Pacific—if she is allowed to. That attitude ought to be welcomed because it stands in such clear-cut contrast to her former isolationism which shied at fortifying island outposts like Wake and Midway Islands in the days when complacent westerners looked upon the “Yellow Peril” as something in the nature of a title for a bedtime story. Pearl Harbour shattered all that. In the intervening months the Allies of the Pacific basin have learned t*> mix together, work together, fight together and die together. It would be a thousand pities if the binding ties of a struggle in a common cause were to be severed or even loosened by post-war squabbles about naval and air bases, the links by which the Pacific will be knit together in a joint plan of common security.

After the war international machinery for outlawing aggression may creak rather ominously until it gradually gets into running order. Obviously, during the probation period, which might last for fifty years, someone will have to act as policeman. The United States, Britain and Russia are three logical choices for that role. If duties are zoned it is logical to think that the Pacific will be allotted to tile Americans, acting in conjunction with their present Allies. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, China, perhaps Russia and the South American republics might share the responsibility and co-operate in undertaking it, but the United States could be expected to lead in peace as she is now doing in war. The policemen’s weapons would be seapower and above all airpower. These would not be used unless some nation threatened to disturb the peace, but they would always be ready in the holster. United States is looking forward to that time now and wisely considering how best she can prepare herself for it. If the present building programme is carried through 1945 we will see her with a record navy. When the war ends she will probably be the greatest air Power in the world. To employ both in the role of guardian of Pacific security in an international system, bases are needed both in her own and in other nations’ territory. Japan will have to yield hers in the mandated islands and it should not be beyond the ability of international co-operation to agree about use of the others, just as the stress of war brought speedy agreement about sharing of Atlantic bases.

Probably the biggest obstacle in the way of bringing such a cordial and necessary arrangement into being would be suspicion—suspicion that the United States is using the war to gain a stranglehold over Pacific trade and territory. It is exemplified by the senseless and baseless talk sometimes heard on street corners in New Zealand: that the Americans are here to take over our country and that, in the not distant future, we will be tied not to the British Commonwealth but to the United States. On the American side distrust is fostered by the insidious nonsense appearing in the editorial columns of the Chicago “Ti*ibune” and other mouthpieces of the Hearst Press. It is true that the war has been responsible for us discovering each other and also for making us realise that our destinies are cast more or less together in the Pacific. Widening that conception it is not difficult to see that the future of all peoples who have fought together will be bound together in the postwar world. We would lose the peace if the term “United Nations” and all it implies died with the war. People who sense American commercial aggression in the Pacific have forgotten about the Atlantic Charter. Mr Sumner Welles puts United States’ motives in their correct perspective when he says: America does not desire to transform the Pacific into an American lake. Rather should we make it a peaceful lake, equally safe for the interests of all Powers.

If apportionment of responsibility for building a new world results in the United States being more prominent

in the Pacific than she has been hitherto that does not mean New Zealand is surrendering its British heritage or repudiating the ties of blood and affection with the country we still like to call Home.