Aug. 20. hw speed! with which President Roosevelt is making preparations for the defence of the Western Hemisphere is indicated by the piciily with which he has secured agree~ ment with Canada to establish a permanent Joint Canadian-American board to make the necessary plans, Doubtless preliminary nego~ tiations had been conducted before President Roosevelt_met Mr. W. Mackenzie King, median Prime Minister, at a railway siding Oxelenburg, N.Y, and the preparatory work which had been done was sufficient to enable the leaders to reach swift agreement. Now, all problems on land, sea und in the air witl be discussed by four or five experts, from each country, with an dex of bringing about 11 complete unification of ideas and providing fur the closest ce-operation. It is. unlikely in the extreme that President Roosevelt will mncet with any dliffieully in getting his moves confirmed by Gon doubtless they will have to be, be by all Americans. expected that he will receive the n both houses.
But it is necessary th pay the closest attention to the from Fifth Columnists, which some of th rs ave watching with the el deal their activities, and the defence of the United fates, and the western hemisphere will not he complete until these people have been properly dealt with, "Phe Nazi organization spread throughout the United States, com= pletely Germanic in inspiration and manage ment, need to be dealt with immediately. Where is in the United States the same tend~ ney to be noticed in Britain, to re~ yard these organizations with that degree of tolerance generally accorded th the "half-baked" people who catch on to any idea chiefly because of the excitement provided. The British Fascists were allowed to large far too long after the den of war, and the fact that they did ewlar harm {o the British cause is due to th of the police parent of the Fascist plans. But, nevertheless, it is plain that im= mediately upon the declaration of war thes people should have been put under restraint.
hey might have committed a serious amount of sabotage, and the reason they did not is in, all probability due 10 uncertainty as to the ouleome of thew:
(that the seth the United States should at all times be in'
4 position to deal with the internal threat which has been built up through the activ ties of German emissaries accepting orders: from Berlin. Investigations are being carried on by a senatorial committee. Nevertheless the fact that the United States and the Government of Canada have entered into a com= mon scheme for mutual defence against a non-American enemy is one which will be wholly acceptable to the British Government. Indeed if it were found necessary for the two countries to take a further step and negotiate an alliance for common resistance to external aggression there is not the slightest reason to believe that Great Britain would have any real objection to such a step being taken. It would, in the circumstances, be a perfectly proper and natural thing to do. There now remains the question of the provision of naval and air bases in British possessions in the western hemisphere for the use of the services of the United States. Naturally it will be hoped by the public of both countries that these negotiations will go through with equal rapidity. The possibility of Britain ceding some of her possessions in the West Indies against, say. a reduction of the British debt to the United States has certain attractive aspects, not the least of which would be the removal of an unavoidable cause of reproach which has existed all too long between the two nations. In. any event it must be part of Great Britain's: policy to render to the United States every possible assistance to enable them to place themselves in the best posture of defence against the common enemy, always with the fixed determination that this present war shall terminate in a manner which shall remove all menace to the Americas for all time.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.