LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
WRANGELL ISLAND. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—I • have noticed a letter from -Mr. Howard Hodgkin in the Spectator for June 23rd suggesting that Wrangell Island might be internationalized under the control of the League of Nations. A little autobiographical note might make it clear that this cannot be to me an unwelcome suggestion. Since near their beginning I have been a member of the Empire League and of the English-Speaking Union. Most of my friends are for the League of Nations, and so am I. I am for the extension and strengthening of the Empire, partly because I am not certain that the English-Speaking Union can be realized for the present. I prefer a Union of all English-speaking countries to a mere extension of the Empire, but that Union seems to me somewhat more remote than the possibility of a really united Empire powerful enough to dictate-the peace of the world. An effective League of Nations, *Me Still more desirable than a mere English-Speaking Union, is also in my opinion still more remote. Anything I try to do towards the unification or permanence of the Empire—and this includes the retention of Wrangell Island— is done, then, with the idea of having -a second string to our bow ; just in case we cannot soon achieve an adequate League of Nations, it may be well to husband our territories and resources. If we have confidence in ourselves as a force for peace and stability, we should try to make good our control of the Polar Ocean. The importance of this becomes clearer the more certainly we see that we are at the beginning of a new epoch, in which the Polar Ocean will separate one land from another only in the same sense in which the Atlantic or Indian Oceans separate them.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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