Some Strategical Considerations

nPHE article quoted in the from A the Honolulu Star Bulletin , concern ing “Handing Over Tahiti and French Oceania to U.5.A.,” has aroused some comment, but no excitement, in the French islands.

It is very clear that the author did not have a map of the Pacific Ocean before him, when he wrote his essay, nor a naval strategist at his elbow.

Had he consulted either of these, he would have discovered speedily how absolutely useless to the U.S.A., for pur poses of strategy, the Tahitian Islands would be.

Should Australia declare war on the United States, these islands might prove of some value as an advance station against attack from the south-west. But

as the bogeyman seems to be Japan, the strategic value of Tahiti would be about that of St. Helena—in the Atlantic—as a naval outpost against an attack on New York from Sweden.

The arena of war between the United States and Japan would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Aleutian Islands, in the Bering Sea.

Hawaii is the left flank of United States defence, not its centre. Samoa might prove of some use as a base for a warship or two guarding trade routes; but we have our doubts.

As for Japan, her objectives are very much nearer home.

It ought to occur to the mind of the Hawaiian writer that the ownership by France —traditionally the friend and ally