Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1940-08-21
Atlantic Bases

The announcement by Foreign Sec
rotary Halifax that an agreement
In principle" has been reached be-
tween the governments OF Great
Britain and the United States for the
leasing to this country for ninety
nine years of naval and air bases in
British possessions on this side of
the Atlantic should be a source of
profound satisfaction to the people
of the United States.
1t is notorious fact that this Ma
ton does not have adequate base
facilities for defense purposes in the
Atlantic. Until the present threat
to British naval supremacy arose,
this was not regarded as a vital de-
ficiency. as we have depended in
recent years on the cooperation of,
or, at worst, on the benevolent neu-
trality of the British fleet for Sc
curity in the Atlantic, concentrating
our own naval strength in the Pa
cif1c. But If Britain should be over
whelmed and her fleet captured or
destroyed, an entirely different sit
uation would confront us. We would
be left then without effective allies
to face the possibility of an attack
which might be aimed at vulnerable
points in our defenses, either to the
north or to the south.
One Of these presently undefended
highroads for invasion lies along
the Greenland-C Canada route, while
the other and more dangerous one is
in the Southern Caribbean area,
where there is gap of approx
mately one thousand miles in our
defenSes through which an invader
might strike at the Panama Canal.
The opportunity now presented to
strengthen our defensive position
through the acquisition by lease of
air and naval base sites in areas in
these regions now controlled by Great
Britain Is so clearly to our advan-
tage, and the need for working out
some such agreement is so urgent,
that serious objection Is not likely to
be raised in any quarter. But even
If some extremists should protest, 1t
is to be hoped that the administra-
ton will not countenance any delay
in translating the agreement in
principle" into a completed trans
action.
Prime Minister Churchill, in his
address to the House Of Commons
yesterday, made it clear that the
discussion as to the transfer of base
facilities was being treated as an
entirely independent transaction.
These negotiations are not tied to
the British efforts to acquire some
average American destroyers, and
that is as it should be, but there is
no reason why the two matters
should not be considered simulta-
neously.
OF necessity, we must be guided to
a very considerable extent by the
judgment Of our own naval experts
in determining whether we should
part with any destroyers that we
now possess On the one hand, 1t is
contended that destroyers and all
other combat ships are built to be
used, and that those which the Brit
ish desire to buy could not be put to
better use, from the standpoint Of
our own safety, than In the defense
of Britain. This contention is based
on the belief that we would have no
need for the destroyers if the British
Navy remains intact, and that 1t
would be better for us to part with
fifty destroyers now to prevent the
conquest of Britain than to keep
them in American ports for possible
use should we be attacked after
Britain is beaten.
The argument on the other side,
from the strategic standpoint, ap-
pears to be that Britain's chances Of
survival are slim in any event and
that we cannot afford to take the
risk of parting with fifty destroyers
which probably would be lost In bat
tie without affecting the result Of
the fighting. These are issues which
laymen cannot decide intelligently.
It is clearly to our advantage to
make every reasonable effort, short
of war, to aid the British, but
whether the proposed destroyer
transaction falls within this cate
cory is a matter for experts to de-
termine.