Word: canals
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Chief of Staff George Catlett Marshall last August discussed a subject which Army men seldom mention in public : the difficulties of defending the Panama Canal...
Said he (to a Senate subcommittee): "It is a terrific task to guarantee that the Canal will remain open while we still permit commercial traffic through it: Yet it is unthinkable that we would suppress commercial traffic. So we always have a hazard there. . . ."What General Marshall had in mind was the danger that some supposedly innocent tanker, tramp steamer or fishing boat on its way through the locks might suddenly turn out to be a floating time bomb. How acute, ever-present and unpredictable that peril is, the Army learned last week when its own transport...
...Japan the stake was well worth the play. Though the oil fields had been considered worthless by U. S. and British geologists, they gave Japan a foothold on the Gulf of Mexico, a base from which to route supplies across the Mexican Isthmus bypassing the Canal. The embargo involved 700 flasks of mercury (for making explosives), 14 sacks of molybdenum (for making steel alloys), 2,000 tons of fluor spar (for making aluminum), such oddments as 1,700 tons of flour, 5,000 drums of gasoline and oil. But the scrap and certain petroleum products which were "practically Government monopolies...
...Japanese may have desired a base for all sorts of economic penetration of Mexico. They may have wanted a seedling base for eventual military operations: the area is less than 500 air miles from Texas, less than 1,300 from the Panama Canal. But the most plausible theory was that they wanted a base for getting oil across Mexico, in order to avoid the uncertainties and tolls of the sea voyage via the Canal. Some oil for Japan was already being transported across Mexico by rail. Last week Mexicans tried to borrow money in the U. S. to expand rail...
...period, Panama Hattie is easily the ripest of the crop, may well become the musical hit of Broadway's winter if lighthearted depravity pays Mr. Porter anywhere near as well as it has in the past. The scene of the latest of his many successes is a canvas Canal Zone where morals are so loose as to be virtually detached...