PROOF OF INTEREST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26719, 13 March 1948, Page 7

PROOF OF INTEREST

BRITISH OPERATIONS IN ANTARCTIC NOT AIMED AT INTIMIDATION N.Z.P.A.—The Times—Copyright. Rec. 10.30 p.m. LONDON, Mar. 12. The special correspondent of The Times on board the sloop Snipe, which with the cruiser Nigeria has returned to Port Stanley after a nine-day cruise, during which they took Mr Miles Clifford, the Governor of the Falkland Islands on a tour of the bases illegally established by Argentina and Chile in the United Kingdom sector of the Antarctic, says that the aim of the operation was not to intimidate Argentina and Chile as implied in certain alarmist circles; this would merely have helped Argentina and Chile to claim that they were the injured parties. Its purpose was rather to give proof of Britain’s serious interest in the area and to stabilise the situation where an unequal balance of naval power might nossibly in future prompt rash action. The correspondent adds: “ The dignified and friendly behaviour of British officers, both in the delivery and receipt of the numerous protests exchanged, was in welcome contrast to the efforts of nationalist circles in Buenos Aires and Santiago to work up tension over the area. This tension does not exist in the Antarctic itself where reason and the habits of civilised man seem to find survival easier than in warmer climates.”