NEW SUPPLY ROUTE

Southland Times, Issue 24524, 27 August 1941, Page 5

NEW SUPPLY ROUTE

AMERICAN GOODS FOR RUSSIA POSSIBLE USE OF IRAN (Rec. 11.5 p.m.) WASHINGTON, August 25. According to the United Press of America competent authorities asserted that the United States would probably effect the delivery of war supplies to Britain and Russia under the protective guns of the Pacific Fleet if the British-Russian Iran campaign succeeds. A junction of the Soviet and British armies in Iran would forge the last link of a strategic trans-Pacific supply line extending from the United States west coast through British Malaya, thence to India into the Persian Gulf and across either Iran or the Caspian Sea to south-east Russia. The fleet could guarantee the route without leaving the Pacific, thus blasting Axis hopes of forcing the fleet into the Atlantic so Japan would be free to pursue her expansionist programme in the southern Pacific. The route would be safely outside the war zones and would also be shorter than the pi esent route to the Middle East via the Red Sea and Egypt. It can be assumed that Britain has sent three battleships to Singapore, says The New York Post. The diversion of American naval forces from the Pacific to the Atlantic is taken as confirmation of reports published in the United States that Britain has reinforced her Far Eastern squadron. NAVY EQUALLY DIVIDED The United States Navy _ is now equally divided in the Atlantic and the Pacific and may start shooting in the event of new German threats in either ocean, states Major Hanson Baldwin, military correspondent of The New York Times. The Germans, he adds, are preparing for an intensified U-boat campaign throughout the winter if they are bogged down in Russia. This campaign will be counter-balanced by the more efficient and swifter construction of American merchantmen, submarine chasers, patrol planes and aircraftcarriers. The Maritime Commission plans to launch two freighters a day during the next two years. Major Baldwin considers that Britain’s blockade of the Continent is growing more important monthly.

NEW ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Rec. 6.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, August 25. President Roosevelt nominated Mr Francis Biddle, the Solicitor-General, to be Attorney-General in place of Mr R. H. Jackson. The Senate approved the appointment of Mr Rexford Guy Tugwell as Governor of Puerto Rico.