THE ROAD TO ALASKA
By SIR EVELYN WRENCH
EVER since the days of Stephenson's Rocket,' the dis- covery of the internal combustion engine and the Wright brothers' first flight in a heavier-than-air machine at Kitty Hawk fresh prospects of bringing the uttermost parts of the earth closer to us open before our eyes. Within the past seventy years there has taken place the construction of the Suez Canal, the building of the first trans-continental railroad across Canada, the development of the Cape to Cairo project, and quite recently the inception of a regular trans-Pacific air service, while a regular trans-Atlantic air service is promised next year.
The proposal to build the Alaskan Highway deserves to be classed among the great space-annihilating projects of the present century. Some seven years ago the United States Congress passed legislation authorising the appointment of a commission to collaborate with the Canadian authorities. Ever since then the American people have taken a keen interest in the proposal and it has been stated unofficially that American financiers would be prepared, in return for certain Concessions, to construct the proposed highway, from the United States border to Fairbanks in the United States Territory of Alaska, a distance of some 2,200 miles, of which some 1,800 miles runs through Canadian territory. The scheme has naturally aroused much interest in British Columbia, the Province most vitally concerned ; the Pro- vincial Premier, Mr. T. D. Pattullo, is sponsoring the proposal and intends to go to Washington at an early date to continue negotiations with the United States authorities.
The United States Congress has already passed legislation authorising the appointment of a commission to collaborate with a similar commission to be appointed by the Canadian Government. This body will examine the proposal in all its details, study the question of finance, the annual cost of upkeep and the engineering problems involved. Mr. Pattullo has recently stated that the United States is anxious to have the road built and would lend British Columbia, without interest, the money necessary for its construction. Various estimates have been made of the cost of the undertaking varying from three to eight million pounds, though in all probability the cost would be nearer ten million. There is still considerable opposition to the proposal in British Columbia, where it is pointed out that it is not ..desirable that the Dominion should permit a, " foreign " Power to build a highway for its own purposes of military strategy through Canada.
A suggestion has recently been made that as an act of imaginative statesmanship the British Government should lend the Province of British Columbia the sum of say five million pounds—much less than the cost of a modern battleship—for ten years without interest, or at a very low rate. This suggestion has not been without its critics.
Financial experts in the City of London have contended that Canada should provide the money herself They assert that owing to the growing burden of rearmament and the cost of providing for essential social services In Great Britain the London money-market is not in a position to provide the money because of the effect it would have on the exchanges ; they also assert that while the resources of the London money- market are open to Canadian Government borrowing, the making of loans to Canadian Provinces is not looked on with favour at the present time because of over-borrowing in certain directions. But if the City since the War has been able to advance large sums of money to Germany and Eastern European countries it should surely be willing to help forward so important an undertaking as this. The Alaskan Highway . project must be considered as part of the whole problem of the development of British Columbia —one of the most richly endowed portions of the British Empire, with an area exceeding that of France, Italy, Holland and Belgium combined but with a population less than that of the city of Birmingham. In no part of the British Common- wealth are there greater possibilities than in British Columbia. No section of the Empire is more devoted to the Imperial connexion. In few places does the settler from Great Britain feel more at home, owing no doubt to the friendly people, and a climate in some ways not unlike that of the British Isles.
The building of the road would be of great importance to North America as a whole. It would provide employment for 4,000 or 5,000 workers at a time when jobs are by no means over-plentiful in Western Canada ; it would fill a gap in the defences of the British Commonwealth ; it would focus attention on British Columbia, the Empire's outpost on the north Pacific ; it would be of incalculable value in opening up vast areas in central and northern British Columbia and' enabling the province to become one of the world's great tourist resorts, a greater Switzerland. If the British Govern- ment advanced a substantial sum towards the cost of the undertaking it should be possible to arrange for some care- fully-thought-out scheme of migration, to include the establish- ing of some thousands of British youths on the land after they had been trained on farm schools, and also to provide for settlement of a certain number of Jewish and non-Aryan refugee boys.
The building of the Alaskan Highway would have a much wider significance than the mere development of a fertile and thinly-populated area within the British Commonwealth. Today we are celebrating a hundred and twenty-five years' peace between the two great English-speaking democracies. Never before have they been spiritually so close. The construction of a road which would connect with the Pacific Highway, running from the Mexican border to the forty- ninth parallel, would link up the United States with its greatest " colony " Alaska, and become of immense strategic value to the United States in the event of war. The days when the Dominion feared her southern neighbour have gone, never to return. The relations between Canada and the United States stand as an example to the world of what international relations should be. The Alaskan Highway, running eighteen hundred miles through territory over which the Union Jack flies, would be an outward symbol of the peaceful relations existing between the British and American Commonwealths. From the material standpoint the Highway would be an irresistible attraction to American motorists, who in their hundreds of thousands each summer would explore the scenic wonders of this great unknown north land.
There are some who suggest that the people of Canada and of the British Commonwealth should stand aside and gratefully accept American dollars to finance the scheme, but surely there is enough patriotic spirit left in the British Empire to prevent us playing the role of poor relations. As the United States will benefit from the construction of the Highway there could be little objection to American participa- tion in the financing of the scheme, but the maj3r portion of the funds for one of the greatest undertakings in the British Empire should on every ground come from British and Canadian sources.
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