DRAMATIC MOVE BY PRESIDENT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20097, 2 May 1935, Page 9

DRAMATIC MOVE BY PRESIDENT

SEQUEL TO GENERAL’S OUTBURST NO INTENTION TO SEIZE ISLANDS United Pres-! Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright In a sharply-worded message, President Roosevelt ordered the Military Committee of the House of Representatives to discontinue the publication of testimony taken in the study of the War Department. He warned the Committee that he would exercise his authority as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, if necessary, to stop the publication of anything which he regarded as unfriendly to other nations. President Roosevelt called particular attention to the statements made by General F- M. Andrews, Chief of the Air Force Headquarters, which, he said, did not represent the policy of the Administration or the Commander-in-Chief. [General Andrews told the Military Committee of the House of Representatives that in an emergency, the United States must be prepared to seize the British and French Islands near America. General Andrews declared that even with Canada neutral, an enemy has the following bases available: Newfoundland, Bahamas, Jamaica, Trinidad, British Honduras, and the Lesser Antilles. “To insure against air attacks being launched from any of these in time of emergency, they must be kept under surveillance to discover any evidence of preparation at such bases. We must be ready to bomb such installations as soon as they are discovered. If the situation is sufficiently vital to require it, we must be prepared to seize these outlying bases.”]

PRESIDENT’S UNPRECEDENTED ACTION FIRM STAND AGAINST ALARMIST STATEMENTS United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received May 1, 7.15 p,nj.) WASHINGTON, April 30. President Roosevelt took what is believed to be an unprecedented action to-day by invoking his power as Commander-in-Chief of the Army to rebuke the chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee for publishing the testimony of General Charles Kilboume, until recently assistant Chief of Staff, pertaining to the neutrality of nearby territory in event of war emergency. In the recent hearings General Kilbourne declared that it might be necessary to seize the British and French Islands in the Atlantic to prevent an enemy utilising them as air bases. The President flatly repudiated such intentions, but apparently the part of General Kilbourne’s testimony which the President found most amazing was the reference to the “camouflaged” section of the Air Base Bill, under consideration, which would build a military aviation base near the Canadian border under the guise of an “intermediate station for transcontinental flights.”

President Roosevelt’s letter to the chairman of the Committee (Mr McSwain) declared that hereafter such testimony must either be kept secret or presented to him for approval before being published. “I desire to inform the Committee,” added the President, “that certain portions of the testimony of General Kilboume, specially those relating to the Canadian border, do not represent the policy of the Administration, or the Commander-in-Chief, nor do they reflect the views, purposes or motives of the United States Government. This Government does not envisage any possibility of a change in the friendly relations between the United States and any foreign country, The Government accepts as an accomplished fact the peace conditions cemented by many generations of friendship between Canada and the American people, and expects permanently to live up to the letter, as well as the spirit, of the treaties relating to permanent disarmament on the boundary.”