A flight of U.S. Army bombers landed r:- cently in Trinidad to take up station there. From Brooklyn an Army transport laden with infantry and coast artillery sailed for the same destination, s'atss "Time" The two events, as intrinsically insignificant as the appearance of the first robin in the spring. were nonetheless informative. They did not mean that now or, even soon the U. S. would have a chain of well defended bases in the Atlantic and Caribbean. But they did mean that action was geting under way, and they implied that of all the chain of southern defence sites—not only those leased from Britain Dut those at Puerto Rice, the Virgin Islands and the Canal Zone—Trinidad's development stood high on the list of prion Most of the still undeveloped sites will rate as service stations for naval, air and land forces. Thus Bermuda and Jamaica are to be major service stations (naval and air); Antigua and St. Lucia are to be secondary ones (for air). Three of the links in the chain will be much more than service"s'ations. Trinidad, Puerto Rice, the Canal Zone will be the key positions.
Trinidad is the southern spearhead, where defence is most urgent because it lies athwart the most practicable rout: for an enemy move irom Dakar in western Africa. thence to some landing point on the eastern hump of South America, and northward to the Canal Zone, Central America, the U. S. itself. Geographically, Trinidad also in a position to protect—or to dominate—the whole uncertain reach of northern South America. So far it is not a protection but only a position.
On the northwest point of Trinidad, just above Port-of-Spain, the American Navy has leased one of the finest anchorages in the Western Hemisphere: a place of deep. clear water between low islands and the shore, where warships can ride at protected ease. The small but hilly islands are ideal for fortification. The Navy also has ample land for a huge shore establishment: Marines, maintenance facilities for ships in the anchorage, headquarters forces. For the present, and for a considerable time to come, the Navy will have only what God and the British had already put in Trinidad: the anchorage itself, the great docks and the harbour of Port-of-Spain.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.