Word: athwart
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Madagascar stands like a listless but potentially powerful sentinel athwart the vital supply line that feeds the United Nations salient separating Jap from German. In ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope go planes and tanks and men to fight, from Egypt to Calcutta. They pass within range of Madagascar's bases. North of the island, aircraft can be flown across the Indian Ocean to Australia or Ceylon. And in Madagascar's fields and harbors, planes and ships can be refueled and repaired...
...place against the Jap, forestalled him in another south Pacific area. Washington announced that U.S. troops had landed in New Caledonia, a Free French island 700 miles east of Australia. It was a prize the Jap would have given a lot of men to take, for it lies athwart the lifeline from the U.S. to Down Under. It is also incredibly rich in minerals -No. 2 world producer of nickel, No. 5 of chromite. New Caledonia was worth anybody's taking. And the Jap, at least temporarily stalled in New Guinea, had been scooped...
...trucks, interstate commerce, which the Constitution guarantees shall be unobstructed, is about as free as a traffic jam. State regulations (chiefly on vehicle weight and length) stop them in every direction. Pennsylvania, sprawled athwart main east-west as well as north-south routes, limits vehicles' weights to 19½ tons (way under that of bordering States). Kentucky, like a feudal baron astride the routes from the Midwest to the South, limits weights to 14 tons (liberalized last year from 9 tons), and exacts toll from highway commerce. Other blockades: Kansas (where trucks have to line up for hours...
Fourth largest of the world's islands, Madagascar is 241,094 square miles in area. It lies only 240 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa, athwart the United Nations' sea lane around the Cape of Good Hope to the Persian Gulf, to India and Australia. If Japan had Madagascar, the Axis would threaten the whole Indian Ocean. Madagascar is 3,800 miles from Java and 7,200 from Tokyo-not as far as Australia is from...
Just off Africa, athwart the only Indian Ocean lanes now reasonably open to the United Nations, lies Vichyfrance's Madagascar. If it became a base for Axis warships, submarines and planes, it would give Japan and/or Germany complete control of the Indian Ocean crossroads. Madagascar in Axis hands would be a disaster comparable to the loss of Singapore...