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Show 1 Washington, D. C. BRITISH FLEET FOR U. S. LOANS ! L. W. ("Chip") Robert, secretary of the Democratic national commit-: commit-: tee, has a plan for refunding war debts, also for selling more supplies j-to the allies and at the same time en-' en-' suring Western hemisphere defense. ; Briefly put, it is to take a mort-j mort-j gage on the British fleet in lieu of war debts. ! In other words, the British would .make a small token payment, then ! promise to turn their fleet over to i the United States on the war debt j in case of default. In return, the ; Johnson act would become inopera-: inopera-: five, and the United States would extend ex-tend immediate war credits. ! Behind this, of course, is not so j.much the matter of war debts, but the very real fear that the United j States may lose its greatest bulwark ' of protection the British fleet. I How important the British fleet is j to American defense is only just ; percolating to the general public, i ileal fact, however, is that the Unit-'ed Unit-'ed States is not now prepared to , defend both the Pacific and At-I At-I lantic coasts, and will not be pre- pared for four more years. It would take at least that long to build a '.second fleet. i Note Another plan receiving in-i'Jormal in-i'Jormal consideration by some of the 1 insiders is to repeal the Johnson act j and give immediate credits to the j allies, in return for a mortgage on I the French and British possessions jiu the Western hemisphere. I GREENLAND AIR BASE I You can write it down as certain j that should Hitler send an air expedition expe-dition to Greenland or occupy it .otherwise, Roosevelt would oppose jthat occupation, if necessary with the armed forces of the United ; States. i However, should Hitler get to Greenland first, the United States would have no adequate airplane i .force or naval strength in the Atlantic At-lantic to dislodge him. 1 If Hitler took Greenland or Ice-! Ice-! land, the United States would have . about as hard a time getting him out . ' .-. allies had in rooting the ! Jtfazis out of Norway, i Military axiom (emphasized by rtfcis war) is: Once the enemy gets j:ontrol of a seaport or an air base, ,:it is going to be twice as hard, al-inost al-inost impossible to get him out. So ! you may see something done by the t ,i United States abnnt Greenland in the not too aislani future. 1. " ' HEMISPHERE DEFENSE ! These arev days when the United (states is supposed to be bending every effort to co-ordinate the de-ifense de-ifense of the Western hemisphere; I days when President Roosevelt im-j im-j presses upon congress the vulner-' vulner-' ability of the Panama canal and IXatin America to airplane attack. i Boiled down to cold fact, however, the United States has done very i little toward co-operating with Latin i America on Western hemisphere de-' de-' fense. ' For instance, four years ago j Brazil asked the United States te permit the leasing or sale to South American neighbors of decrepit de-j de-j stroyers rusting in Philadelphia and j.San Francisco harbors since the I World war. But congress threw up its hands in horror of rearmament I and said No. j Then in March, 1939, a biU was introduced in congress permitting ' Latin American nations to build ' ships in U. S. navy yards and buy ! 'Certain equipment from the U. S. I army and navy which would not con-j con-j flict with our own national defense all paid for in cash. The bill passed the house of representatives rep-resentatives but hung up in the sen- ate. And there it still hangs. In , fact, it has been stymied for a year by Senator Vandenberg. j LATIN AMERICAN CRITICISM Meanwhile Latin American nations, na-tions, not understanding the Amer-; Amer-; ican parliamentary system by which one man sometimes can thwart the rest of congress are critical, saying say-ing U. S. doesn't co-operate. Note The senate foreign relations committee also has buried the Ar- gentine sanitary convention which i permits the entry of dressed lamb I from Patagonia, the Antarctic end of Argentina, where hoof and mouth disease does not exist. HOW HITLER FIGURES To understand the present tactics : of Germany you have to go back to ; a remark attributed to Hitler before the war really got serious: "If the war lasts four years I , would lose 4,000,000 men. It is bet-i bet-i ter to lose 3,000,000 men in three i months." Hitler is determined to push the ' war to a quick finish this summer, ' no matter how long and tragic may ' be the stream of coffins going back from the front. Hitler has ample supplies to last through the summer, but not beyond. be-yond. So if the war drags past the autumn, Germany is lost. i MERRY-GO-ROUND ' If you want to read a sizzling book on politics, get the recently pub-' pub-' lished "Rascals in Democracy" by ' Kansas political writer W. G. Clugs-ton. |