AGREEMENT AT HAVANA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23721, 30 July 1940, Page 6

AGREEMENT AT HAVANA

The Inter-American Conference at Havana, which will probably Q,nd to-morrow, appears to have reached agreement on the main question it was called to discuss, that of the threatened transference of colonies of non-American Powers in the "Western Hemisphere to other nonAmerican Powers. A united policy on this matter was made desirable, 1 even vital, when Germany forcibly achieved the subjection of European States possessing colonial territories in the Americas, for such territories, it was immediately feared, might bo I seized by Germany or Italj' for their own purposes or to be handed to other non-American States. This j would mean a defiance of the claim made in 1823 by the United States, primarily in their own interest but eventually endorsed by the LatinAmerican republics, to the right to oppose any future colonisation in the Western Hemisphere by a nonAmerican Power. Embodied in tho claim, which was given definite form in the famous Monroe Doctrine, was a determination* to safeguard the peace of the Americas. In the view of the first exponents of the principle, its emphatic assertion was a step toward universal peace as well as self-protection. Although only a unilateral act, it has,been accepted throughout the world, for more than 100 years, as a legitimate expression of national thought and policy. It was not upset by the upheaval produced in 1914-18 by the World War. Now, however, by the successes of Germany in the present war, a fear of its violation has arisen; hence at the Havana Conference, attended by representatives of tho various American republics, the danger has been made the subject of unanimous agreement to withstand togethei not only direct efforts to seize French Guiana, Dutch Guiana, French and Dutch islands of tho West Indies and even Danish Greenland, but also any assumption, by a victor over their possessors, of a right to transfer them to another non-American Power. The precise text of the declaration by the conference will be read with interest when it is available, for it should include a statement of the means to be adopted to implement this part of the long-standing doctrine.