DESTROYERS FOR BASES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21735, 17 August 1940, Page 7

DESTROYERS FOR BASES

British Offer To U.S.A. Navy’s Objection May Be Overcome United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright WASHINGTON, August 15. It is authoritatively stated that Britain has offered to lease naval base sites in the British western hemisphere possessions to the United States for 99 years in return for 50 or more over age destroyers. It is reported that the AttorneyGeneral (Mr Robert H. Jackson) expressed the opinion that the existing law would not prohibit trading the destroyers if the Chief of Naval operations certified that they were not essential for the defence of the United States. « The Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Henry Morgenthau jr. told a press conference that the British were repeating weekly urgent appeals for permission o buy old United States destroyers. Replying to a question as to whether they had discussed trading islands, he said: “I am not going into that.” Reports published in a New York newspaper stating that Britain and the United States were negotiating for the exchange of strategic British islands for American warships were denied in Washington. The President’s secretary (Mr Stephen Early) said he had checked with President Roosevelt, who had replied emphatically: “It’s just another story.” Previously the State Department denied knowledge of such negotiations. The story to which Mr Early -eferred was a message from Washington published in the “New York Post.” It declared that negotiations were approaching a climax for the exchange of British islands in the Western Hemisphere for United States destroyers and torpedo-boats. It added: “The Navy’j objections have been overcome by an offer of strategic islands, also permission for the United States to build Army and Navy air bases in any British territory in the Western Hemisphere.”