Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1940. CO-OPERATION IN THE PACIFIC.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 October 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1940. CO-OPERATION IN THE PACIFIC.

QNLY a week or two ago, the Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Mr Wendell Willkie, was reported as pledging himself never to send an. American to fight across the sea. Now, although he denies having given an interview in which he was reported to have endorsed ‘ an immediate extension of joint Anglo-American defence corporation in the Pacific and negotiations to secure bases in Singapore and Australia for the United States,” Mr Willkie states, that he favours the acquisition of bases in the Pacific and stands by the speech he made in San Francisco on September 22. On that occasion he said in part:— First we must keep sending aid to Britain, our first line of defence and only remaining friend. Second, in the Pacific our best ends will be served by a strong, free, and democratically progressive China. We should render economic assistance to that end. Third, we must have an impregnable defence system; fourth, revise industry; fifth, ‘use credits and economic agreements wisely, and sixth, explore, acquire, and develop Pacific air bases. The total effect of Mr Willkie’s pronouncements for the time being is to leave his attitude rather vaguely defined. The American Government also is still markedly reticent on the subject of Pacific bases, but this may be due less to an unwillingness to enter into full naval and other co-operation with the British Empire than to a desire to give Japan every reasonable chance to abate her present policy of aggression. The trend of world events appears to make increasing defence co-operation between the English-speaking nations virtually inevitable. x An overwhelming weight, of American opinion now supports the policy of giving all the material aid that is possible to Britain in the war on Nazism and it is becoming more and more probable that even when this Avar has been won an attempt by the United States to revert to isolationism will be unthinkable. The prospect raised, in any event, is that it will hardly be practicable, without active American aid, to re-establish law and order in the world and to safeguard democracy. Where naval co-operation in the Pacific is concerned, the United States may the more reasonably be asked to give a generous and purposeful lead since the extent to which American security is guaranteed today by British seapower is acknowledged freely. In an article in “Current History,” for example—an article in which he expresses his private opinions and not those of the United States Navy Department or those of the American naval service at large—Commander M. F. Talbot observes that it was not until the lightning German victories of this spring that America awoke to the danger that her interests in the Orient and in South America might be simultaneously threatened by a combination of Powers, each deploying great naval, military and air forces and each committed to a system of internal government and a foreign policy seemingly opposed to our desire for peace and stability within the structure of the Monroe Doctrine. Such, however, is the menace which we face today. It is a menace which only the ability of Britain to maintain her sovereignty, her Empire, and, most important of all, her fleet can fully and immediately abate. Holding the greatest significance and possibility for good as it bears on world affairs at large, co-operation between the United States and the British Empire could nowhere find better or more hopeful expression than in a decisive lead in collective security in the Pacific. There has been some talk of an eventual extension of the Monroe Doctrine to white outposts in the Pacific. Should this prospect open, it would naturally be expected that these “outposts,” among them this country and Australia, should, as the Melbourne “Argus” observed recently, “help themselves to the limit of their power before seeking external help.” This is entirely just. It is not for British Dominions to attempt to lean helplessly on the United States, or in any way to weaken the ties by which they are linked with the Empire. In its full proportions and approached from the right standpoint, however, Anglo-American co-operation, and not least naval co-operation, holds possibilities of far-reaching mutual benefits, not only to the English-speaking nations but to all nations which desire to live at peace and to respect the rights and liberties of others.