◆ SpookStack

Hanson Baldwin, in Harper's Magazine August, 1940, said, referring to an Season ot this hemisphere: “The problem seems impossible; mot even Britain or a combination of Britain and Germany has sufficient shipping to divert such an enormous amount of it from their ordinary and vital trade routes to military purposes, We do not, therefore, have to fear the employment of mass armies in this hemisphere; the most we have to guard against is the possible tra rtati small expeditionary force.” P neporration of a To come here, after defeating England, Hitl would have to set out for ‘America Spon’ & vast This shows the immense distances which Hitler would bave to travel with bis great army of a million men to attack the United States by way of South America, military adventure, using up all the military resources he has, He would jeave behind him on his rear Russia, which would welcome his plight, and 200,000,000 sullen people in Europe who, we may be sure, would be watching the moment to cause him trouble. That moment would come when he was compelled to strip himself in Europe to fight here. And he would fight here a battle that he would be sure to lose. Dictators cannot afford to take on euch battles. They must win, The President said in his last Message to Con- greas, January 6, 1941, “Even if there were no British navy it is not probable any enemy wenld be stupid enough to attack us by landing troops in the United States from across thousands of miles of ocean, until it had acquired strategic bases from which to operate.” Here is @ complete admission by the man who has done more than anyone else to frighten the American people with the fear of invasion that a direct invasion is not possible. Yet hardly were these words cold on the President's lps when Mr. Hull went before a Congressional Committee and said if the British navy were eliminated to cross the Atiantic by Hitler would be a compara- tively easy matter. The President saves his point by insisting that Hitler would first have to acquire bases in this hemisphere. Now just look at this with a little common sense. Hitler will not come across thou- sands of miles of ocean to invade us directly because of the great distance he would have to transport his armies and equipment. Therefore if he attempted an invasion from bases those bases would have to be much closer to the United States than is Germany. Otherwise there would be no sense in bases. The bases in this hemisphere which would answer this description from which Hitler could attack us are Brazil, various points in the Weat Indies, Bermuda, Newfoundland, Greenland and similar points, Brazil is the favorite South American base to which the President is fond of referring. This is because Hitler can take over West Africa and concentrate his forces at Dakar there, Africa bulges out on its west coast toward South America and South America bulges out toward Africa in Brazil, Dakar in Africa is only 1,600 miles from Pernambuco in Brezil. Hitler will be able to cross over the Atlantic at this narrow stretch to Brazil and, as Senator Claude Pepper has described it, roll on into Venezuela, into Colom- bia, up through Central America into Mexico and on to the Rio Grande. This amazing proposal is so grotesque that it hardly calla for an answer. It overlooks the fact that Hitler muat take hia vast force to Western Africa by sea—which is 3,200 miles from Germany —and then 1,600 miles across the Atlantic to Brazil. He will have travelled near 6,000 miles. Before he started from Germany he would be 3,300 miles from the United States. After travellin 5,000 miles to Brazil he would be 5,366 MILE FROM THE UNITED STATES. He would be further away than before he started, He would have to have of course at least a million men—which would be a ridiculously small number. He would have to bring along all that immense accumulation of trucks, and trailers and motorcycles and tanks and guns and supplies. He would have to conquer Brazil, Venezuela and Colom- bia. Be would have to move his men up through the narrow Isthmus of Panama and on through the Toountainous regions, the swamps, the trackless Plains of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Salvador and Honduras, dragging along his thousand-mile train of trucks and tanks and guns and trailers and supplies into Mexico and up over the wide plateaus, the pathless jungles, over the mountain gorges and the fever-infested plains of Mexico—his million men,