American Atlantic Patrols
Ways must be found to ensure that aid for Britain reaches its destination, said Mr. Cordell Hull last week ; and Colonel Knox, the Secretary of the Navy, in a speech elsewhere, said : " We cannot allow our goods to be sunk in the Atlantic." On the following day President Roosevelt, expressing his agree- ment with these speeches, said that the American " patrol " system established at the outbreak of war, already extended from time to time, would be further extended " as far into the waters of the Seven Seas as may be necessary for the defence of the American hemisphere." Last Tuesday Admiral Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, was even more explicit, when he said that American neutrality patrols were operating at some points as much as 2,000 miles eastward from American shores, or about half-way across the Atlantic. Patrols may not be exactly the sante thing as convoys, but as used by the Americans they are likely to lighten immensely our Navy's work of convoy in the Western half of the Atlantic, so that our ships will be able to concentrate on their protective duties nearer home. This is help of a material kind, and there is no doubt that it is not all of the help that will be given both for pro- tecting our merchant-ships and increasing their number so far as the Atlantic is concerned, apart from the aid promised for delivering goods by the Red Sea approaches to Suez. Help equally effective will be given through the vast pool of merchant-ships which President Roosevelt proposes to create " for service anywhere." Meanwhile it is significant that the Foreign Relations Committee has thrown out (by 13 votes to o) two motions designed to restrain the President from con- voying American ships.
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