He Already Has Possession Of Bases in America

What we had better realize clearly is that there is no longer any question of Adolf Hitler acquiring bases in this hemisphere. He has already acquired them.

They are Greenland and the French possessions in America--the islands Miquelon and St. Pierre, Martinique, Gaudeloupe, plus French Guiana.

Greenland belongs to Denmark. But the Government of Denmark is today absolutely under the control of Hitler, and his legal possession of Greenland is as real as though the Nazi flag were over it.

We had better understand also that the present French Government is a Nazi Government. Petain is only a figurehead. Real power is Pierre Laval, long a Fascist sympathizer. And Pierre Laval obviously means not merely to submit to the Nazis, he means actively to ally himself with them by way of getting the best terms for a Fascist France. That was evident when, in absolute defiance of all promises to Britain, he ordered the French fleet to fight its way home. And the fact that French planes have attacked Gibraltar makes it conclusive.

Martinique and Guadaloupe are departments of France with the same status as any of the departments in France proper. And Martinique, Guadaloupe, Miquelon, St. Pierre, and French Guiana are all governed by men directly under orders from Vichy. They show every sign of intending to remain loyal to the new Laval regime. Which simply means that Fascism is already set up in this hemisphere.

What does Greenland mean? It means this. From Bergen, Norway, to the Shetland Islands is 223 miles. To the Faroe Islands it is 190 more, then 280 to Iceland, also a Danish possession. From Reykjavik, Iceland, to Greenland it is 500 miles, along the line of the proposed Northern Air Route from Chicago to Berlin. From Godthaab, Greenland, to Port Burwell, in Labrador, is 500 miles. A stone's throw from Port Burwell is the province of Quebec. From Quebec City to Boston, as the crow flies, is about 250 miles, to New York about 350. From Montreal to New York and Boston the distances are smaller still. From Sault Ste. Marie to Chicago is about 300 miles, from Hamilton to Detroit about 125, from Vancouver to Seattle about 75.

Two of the links in the Atlantic chain do not now belong to Hitler. The Shetlands belong to Britain, the Faroes, under Danish sovereignty, have been occupied by Britain. But even with these out, the distance from Bergen to Iceland is only 693 miles, easy flying. And of course if England falls the Shetlands and the Faroes will go to Hitler also. As for Miquelon and St. Pierre, they lie 30 and fifteen miles off Newfoundland. They are sandpits inhabited by fishermen, could be occupied easily either from Greenland or from the Azores, which Hitler is expected to take from Portugal soon--would make admirable air bases. Newfoundland is separated from Labrador and the Province of Quebec only by the narrow Belle Isle Strait. It commands the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And across the gulf from it lies Nova Scotia, which would make an even better base for attacking New York and Boston and the cities already mentioned.

Martinique and Guadaloupe lie about 300 miles off the coast of Venezuela. About 300 miles northeast lie the American possessions, the Virgin Islands and Porto Rico. The islands have good naval harbors.

French Guiana commands the mouth of the Orinoco, its capital, Cayenne, lies about 500 miles from Para, Brazil, in striking distance of the Venezuelan capital.

Hitler is not likely to attempt fully to take over these possessions until he has disposed of the British navy, of course--preferring to lull as much as possible. Nevertheless, his note asserting that the Monroe Doctrine is "untenable" plainly announces his ultimate purpose. And meantime he will certainly move heaven and earth to make sure that they are ripe for his occupation when he is ready. Once in these islands, his task of taking over the British West Indies possessions, which absolutely command the Caribbean and the entrance to the Panama Canal, will be much simplified.

In any case, the question is no longer whether he shall get a foothold in this hemisphere. He already has it. Question is what we are going to do about it.

Kids Can't Get Visitor's Visa, Nazi Agents Can

The Washington Merry-Go-Round, with its usual forthrightness, yesterday went to the heart of the case with which Mr. Clapper is concerned in his column today, and told us flatly who is responsible for the State Department ruling that British children cannot come here on regular visitors' visas but must come in under the quota rule, which limits the total number admissible and allows only ten percent of the admissible total to come in any one month--about 6,000 in the case of Britain.

Responsible, said Merry-Go-Round, is Avra M. Warren, chief of the Visa Office.

We know nothing of this man. But his ruling in the case of the children is obviously indefensible. It means that many thousands may die unnecessarily. And it blocks what the overwhelming great part of the population of the United States is thoroughly in favor of--bars thousands from taking children they want and have asked for.

What makes it more appalling still is that Warren hands out visitors' visas to Germans and Nazi sympathizers with great freedom. Merry-Go-Round instanced the case of the Bata workers, who turned out to have marked Nazi sympathies. But a more flagrant example still is afforded by the case of Herr Doktor Westrick, the "trade agent" now in New York for the purpose of trying to sucker this country by appeals to the fear and greed of the idiotic wing of its politicians and business men--to indulge in a polite but deadly effective form of sabotage. This fellow is here under a visitor's visa, presumably okayed by Warren.

Maybe that investigation of the Visa Office Merry-Go-Round mentions is in order.

At This Rate, We'll Get Those Planes About 1950

What we are up against in our efforts to send aid to Britain and to rearm ourselves, so as to keep the Hitler tyranny from overrunning the earth, including the Americas, is well illustrated by the case of the contract for the 9,000 Rolls Royce engines, 3,000 for the United States, 6,000 for Britain.

It is now about two months since the President delivered his great preparedness message to Congress, and proposed a minimum of 50,000 planes for ourselves, aid in flood for the Allies--of whom only one now survives. And since the British released the Rolls Royce patents to the United States, and since Henry Ford assured the country that he could be turning out a thousand planes a day at the end of six months.

But the contract hasn't even been signed yet. Edsel Ford, Henry's son, agreed to take it. But Henry Ford chose, as Dorothy Thompson puts it, to strike against the foreign policy of the Government, refused to play ball unless that foreign policy was amended to suit his own ideas. No Government could submit to that, since it would make Mr. Ford and not the Government the sovereign power in the nation. So the contract had to be canceled, and the greatest single productive unit in the country was immobilized.

Then the Government turned to Packard. Packard wanted ten months, instead of six, to put the motors in production. And now the Packard board has held up the contract "pending further study."

At this rate we shall be getting no planes at the end of the year or even at the end of the year after that. It is precisely the sort of thing which has been the ruin of democracies elsewhere--which has brought France to destruction and slavery, which has England tottering. And it will be the thing which undoes us if we cannot learn to cooperate, cut red tape, and make all other considerations secondary to the primary one of national safety.