A \Vest-African Air-Base
In its large-scale plans for the defence of the Atlantic the United States has not overlooked the importance of the Brazilian coast and the desirability of leasing an air-base from the Brazilian Government to carry farther the chain of bases it has secured in the West Indies. The suggestion that it should look still farther, to the western coast of Africa, is a natural sequel ; for, as Sir Malcolm Robertson has pointed out in a letter to The Times, the mouth of the Gambia River in the British colony of Gambia is only 1,800 miles from Natal in Brazil. It was roughly midway between these two points that the American vessel ' Robin Moor ' was attacked and sunk. Sir Malcolm recalls the fact that the Germans for a number of years ran a regular air-mail service between Natal and Bathurst in the Gambia. The establishment of a base on that side of the Atlantic waist-line would be the natural strategical completion of a system of air-bases stretching from Greenland to Brazil, and doubtless the British Government would be prepared to lease a site if the idea commended itself to the United States Government.
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