SECRET SALE TO BRITAIN

Southland Times, Issue 23734, 4 February 1939, Page 5

SECRET SALE TO BRITAIN

ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN DIRECTOR

RELEASE REPORTED IN U.S.A.

SENSATION IN AMERICA I . (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright) (Received February 3, 6.30 p.m.) . NEW YORK, February 3. A forecast of something still more sensational than the sale of the advanced type of American military aeroplanes to France has been given by Senator Gerald P. Nye (North Dakota), says the Washington correspondent of The New York Herald-Tribune. Senator Nye stated tonight that he had received reports that the army’s most prized possession, an anti-aircraft gun director, had been sold to Britain. The instrument, which was a most closely guarded secret until last summer, when the “deal” was made with Britain, has the power of focusing a radio beam on an approaching aeroplane by picking up the faint electrical discharge from its spark plugs and automatically training anti-aircraft batteries on the machine long before the eye or ear can sense its approach. The release of this gun to Britain is understood to have occurred after the American Ambassador to Paris (Mr William C. Bullitt) persuaded the President (Mr Franklin D. Roosevelt) on the subject of the urgency of the situation abroad. An indication that the foreign policy situation is rapidly coming to.a head is also seen in the following formal statement issued by nine Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee:—

We, the minority members, deplore and protest against the unneutral actions and secret methods employed by the President, which would not have been known to the- American people except through an accidental injury to a French flying officer on January 26. We have no objection to the sale of aeroplanes to any nation with which we have diplomatic relations, but we insist that such secrets and unneutral acts will entangle us in foreign conflicts and endanger the peace of America. We urge the President to present all the facts openly to the American people and uphold our traditional foreign policy of neutrality, non-intervention and peace. The American people, irrespective of party, are opposed to being on the committee of any war programme through secret diplomacy.

A former representative, Mr Hamilton Fish, jun., known as Mr Roosevelt’s “best hater,” accused the President of entering a quasi-military alliance with France and with the intention of fortifying Guam so that it would be an “arrow aimed at the heart and life-blood of Japan.” The Government acknowledged tonight that it had been sued by the Franco Government for the recovery of 10,000,000 dollars worth of silver purchased by the United States from the loyalists. Continuous pressure on the President over foreign policy is expected to induce him to make a so-called fire-side chat in the near future to clarify the position and reassure the people.