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America’s New Atlantic Bases Hem CaribbeanSafeguard All Approaches To United States and Panama Canal Zone.By NORTON PHILLIPS(Released by Western Newspaper Union.)WASHINGTON.—The air and naval bases in the Atlantic ocean and Caribbean sea acquired recently by the United States from Great Britain through negotiations led by the Marquess of Lothian, British envoy in Washington, sweep like an inverted questionmark from Newfoundland on the north, southwest-ward through Bermuda and the Bahamas, south to Jamaica, eastward to Trinidad and British Guiana, and northward again to St. Lucia and Antigua, according to a special bulletin from the National Geographic society.“From Newfoundland, the northernmost base, to British Guiana, on the mainland of South America, southernmost of the bases, is an airline distance of approximately 2,700 miles,” the bulletin says.Newfoundland is one of the most important of the base locations, guarding the northern approaches by air and water to Canada and the United States. It extends for approximately 400 miles north and south across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the wid-ened mouth of the t St. Lawrence riv-^ er. Newfound-land’s famous Lothian Botwood airfield used at one time by the Pan American transatlantic clippers, and recently by American-built war planes-flown to England, lies about 2,000 miles west and slightly south from the coast of Ireland. It is 950 miles southwest of the southern tip of Greenland.Portugal’s Azores islands are 1,400 miles to the southeast, and Bermuda is 1,110 miles to the southwest. Newfoundland is of greatest importance as an air base in midsummer when a short period of goodBermuda Near U. S.The defense base at Bermuda, next to the south from Newfoundland, is within 1,000 miles or less of every important port on the Atlantic coast of North America, both in the United States and Canada. The English channel ports of Britain lie more than 3,000 miles to the northeast. The United States is only one-fifth as distant, since Cape Hatteras, N. C., is 640 miles west and slightly north.Bermuda’s subtropical cluster of more than 150 islands, enclosed within a living barricade of coral reef about ten miles in diameter, already serves as Britain’s base for the British navy’s America and West Indies” fleet. Within the rim of coral reef the.Bermuda islands are so grouped as nearly to encircle the land-locked waters of the Great sound, mentioned as the probable American base. Small islands around the Great sound’s sheltered harbor are the actual bases for the British navy and the Pan American clipper planes.Of the 28,000 residents on Bermuda’s 19% square miles, the white inhabitants are outnumbered in aTax Commission Proposes Budget For RearmamentCHICAGO.—A billion-dollar-a-year rearmament program for the United States which would not cost taxpayers a red cent now or in the future is the prospect held out by the National Consumers Tax commission.In a message to the quarter-million members in 45 states, Mrs. Melville Mucklestone, NCTC president, declared that “if our local governments would eliminate inefficiency and waste from the administration of their affairs, American taxpayers would be saved a sum so large that it would more than offset the $994,400,000 to be raised annually through the national defense act which went into effect July 1.”This seemingly too-good-to-be-true solution to a large part of the defense problem is an actual possibility, Mrs. Mucklestone said, for the simple reason that the local taxpayer is the same one who foots the national tax bill and therefore costs of defense measures.“Experts agree that making our city, town, county, and other local governmental units thoroughly efficient and honest would cut from 10 to 20 per cent from our total local tax bill,” the NCTC leader declared, “without curtailing essential governmental services.”United States' newly acquired naval and air bases in the Atlantic ocean extend from Newfoundland to the mainland of South America, an airline distance of approximately 2,70.0 miles.population 55 per cent colored. A strategic factor is the problem of supplies; food, water, and other necessities are imported chiefly from the United States.3,000 Islands in Bahamas.The Bahama islands group, roughly’ 700 miles southwest of Bermuda, over which the duke of Windsor now presides, consists in all of more than 3,000 islands, islets, cays and rocks strewn over some 630 miles of ocean between Florida and Hispaniola (the island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic). The aggregate area is less than 4,500 square miles. All of the islands are low and of coral formation. The island nearest Florida is Bimini, about 60 miles east of Miami. The most historic is San Salvador (Watling island) ,on the eastern fringe, where Columbus landed in 1492.Jamaica, 500 miles south of the Bahamas, and on the southern side of Cuba, i£ one of the vital base locations because of its nearness to the Panama canal which lies about 550 miles to the south. It is the only one of the bases squarely within the Carribbean sea; the others nearby lie on the outer fringe of that body of water. IllsJrilaiiLi-Windward Passage, shipping channel between the North Atlantic and the Panama canal.Kingston is capital and chief port. With only 4,000 square miles, Ja-Export-Import Bank Authorized to Loan Half-Billion DollarsWASHINGTON. — When congress recently passed a law extending the life of the United States Export-Import bank to 1947, and authorizing $500,000,000 additional loans, it gave sanction and approval to the queerest bank one could ever expect to find. It has no tellers, no cashiers, no cash, no vaults, no marble columns, or no safety devices, butWARREN L. PIERSONyet this financial institution in the last six years has agreed to lend to countries all over the world nearly $437,000,000, has actually advanced $160,000,000, and has collected repayments of $61,500,000.Asked how this could be done, Warren Lee Pierson, president of the bank, replied that the institution uses as much as possible existing American commercial banks — the kind where checks are cashed. These banks advance the funds and handle the documents.Interest payments are shared between the Export-Import bank and the bank which handled the business.The bank was founded in 1934 to assist in the marketing abroad of industrial and agricultural products, particularly cotton, and has slowly developed into one of the most potent forces in stabilizing the foreign trade of the United States, mak ing it possible for the American foreign trader to compete in a world in which other governments direct and control practically all the foreign trade of their nationals.maica supports 1,173,000 inhabitants, the second largest number of British subjects in the Western hemisphere—second only to Canada. Less than one-fifth of them are white.The sheltered harbor of Kingston is seven miles long and more than a mile in width. It is a hub for Caribbean airlines.Trinidad, close to the shore of Venezuela, serves as an “abutment” for the arch of the Windward and Leeward islands which enclose the Caribbean on the east. The island is 1,862 square miles in extent and has a population of 412,000. On the basis of production it is one of the most valuable of England's West Indian colonies.The island has an enormous deposit of natural asphalt, Pitch lake, which covers 114 square miles and from which more than 100,000 tons has been exported in one year. The island also produces as much as 10,-000,000 barrels of petroleum in one year, raising this comparatively small island at one time to eleventh in world production.St. Lucia, one of the Windward islands only 200 miles north of the island of Trinidad, has an excellentmostly Negroes. This island is about 1,150 mjles east of the Panama canal, and faces Dakar, the westernmost point of Africa, about 2,600 miles to the east.Once Was French.The island changed hands between England and France several times, so that the natives speak with a strong French accent. It has been English territory since 1814.The southernmost of the defense bases will be located in British Guiana, Britain’s only territory on the mainland of South America. It will give the United States a base some 1,450 miles east of the Panama canal and about equidistant from the canal and the hub port of the South Atlantic, Natal on the projecting shoulder” of Brazil.The chief port and capital, Georgetown, dominates the 270 miles of coastline. This narrow British strip of South America extends for nearly 500 miles up into the continent’s northern highlands. Its area ,480 square miles. The colony has less than a third of a million inhabitants, nearly a half of them East Indians.Antigua, in the northern half of the sweeping arc of islands that guards the eastern doorway to the Caribbean sea, is about 200 miles north of St. Lucia and 260 miles east of Puerto Rico. An irregularly shaped patch of land, it is the smallest of the West Indies islands offered to the United States for bases. It is only about 12 miles in length from east to west, with a total area of 108 square miles. It has a population of little over 35,000.Although at one time Antigua’s English Harbour was headquarters for England’s Leeward Islands naval station when the island was comparatively rich and active, it is today merely a sleepy tropical outpost, off the regular tourist “beat.” Antigua is valuable as a strategically set watchdog on the route to the Panama canal. It is the center and seat of government of Britain’s Leeward islands. It is situated less than 40 miles north of Guadaloupe, one of France’s colonial possessions whose status following the German conquest of the motherland is still undetermined.”Government Seeks OilFor Delicate MachinesTACOMA, WASH.—Although the increasing number of aeronautical instruments, watches, and other delicate mechanisms is causing a shortage in the supply of fishjaw oil, a government agency, in making a survey of the sources of such lubricants, has found one in the beluga, or white whale, found in large numbers near Cook inlet, 15 miles from Anchorage, Alaska, according to an official report.
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Moville, Iowa, US
Thu, Oct 03, 1940
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