Greenland's Icy Mountains

WAR & PEACE

The chain of Atlantic defense sites on which the U.S. is to build bases now reaches from Greenland to British Guiana. In a sweeping agreement with the Danish Minister in Washington last week, the U.S. took over protection of the world's biggest island, moved the U.S.'s outermost line of potential defenses 900 miles nearer Europe, only three miles from the Nazi war zone. Yet in a week of staggering reverses and calamities, the U.S. could draw one lesson clearly: the new base sites should have been secured long ago, so that instead of sites we would have bases.

Envoy. The man who made the Greenland deal possible was Henrik de Kauffmann, 52. When the Nazis seized Denmark last year, Minister de Kauffmann sat tight in the modest little Danish Legation on Washington's Massachusetts Avenue. Slight, dapper, greying and grave-faced, he let his staff know that he intended to represent his country's interests, regardless of Nazi-inspired orders from Copenhagen or Berlin. He was ordered to cooperate with the German charge d'affaires. He did not. When the U.S. seized 39 Danish ships, he did not protest, arranged their transfer to the U.S. A firm anti-Nazi, married to the daughter of a U.S. admiral, he had one trump card to play when the Germans brought pressure on the Danes to force his recall: the U.S. would not recognize any other Danish envoy.

At 4 o'clock one afternoon last week, Minister de Kauffmann, dapper as usual in his grey suit and roll-brim black hat, hurried into the State Department. Cordell Hull was waiting for him. Waiting also was the agreement that Minister de Kauffmann had negotiated, without the knowledge and against the will of his Nazi-dominated Government at home. Pale and unsmiling, he signed; "Judge" Hull, scowling, affixed his nose glasses and signed after him. By the agreement's terms:

> The U.S. reiterated its recognition of the sovereignty of Denmark over Greenland;

> The U.S. received the right to build and maintain landing fields, seaplane bases, radio stations, weather stations, roads and fortifications and "do any and all things necessary" to maintain defense facilities;

> The U.S. agreed that the deal should remain in force "until the present dangers to the peace and security of the American continent have passed."

Thus the U.S. assumed a virtual protectorate over Greenland. It acted under the Monroe Doctrine, which forbids the transfer of territory in the Americas from one non-American power to another. In Berlin, Nazi spokesmen muttered about taking appropriate action. In Copenhagen the Danish Government, under Nazi pressure, disavowed the agreement, protested, ordered Minister de Kauffmann's recall. Minister de Kauffmann paid no attention.

Uses. Last year the State Department dispatched young James Penfield and George West Jr. on the Coast Guard cutter Comanche to establish the first U.S. consulate in Greenland. Through fog to Arsuk Fjord, to Ivigtut and beyond, to

Godthaab, capital of South Greenland (population: 700), Penfield and West made their way to the U.S.'s most northerly consulate. They were astonished to find that Greenlanders, with almost 24 hours of sunlight a day during the summer, have daylight saving time.

Consul Penfield had a busy year. U.S. Coast Guard units prowled along the indented coast. Three German ships from Norway (some 1,000 miles away) hovered near by. One landed parties on the east coast for meteorological observations

--the weather of Britain can be forecast from the winds and temperature of Greenland.* Last fall, Consul Penfield had more sensational news to report: German planes were making reconnaissance flights over east Greenland. Last month, he flashed a bigger warning: a huge Nazi bomber had been spotted on the east coast, next day another German warplane.

The potential usefulness of Greenland to Germany was obvious. German planes could fly south over British convoy routes, flash positions to submarines or surface raiders waiting in the lonely Northern seas. How much use was Greenland to the U.S.? Last week it appeared that Greenland's value depended on the weather, on U.S. ingenuity, and on the policy the U.S. wanted to follow.

> Greenland bases would make possible a steady bomber patrol from Greenland to Scotland. Airmen believe a bomber patrol would be the most effective kind of convoy --but point out that the plan would require stepping up U.S. bomber production beyond present plans.

> Most frequently mentioned possibility was that the U.S. might convoy ships to Greenland, British convoys taking them on to Iceland and home, thus halving the distance of hard-pressed British convoys.

> U.S. bombers fly to Britain, but other warplanes are shipped. With landing fields in Greenland, light bombers and pursuit planes could hop, skip and jump from the U.S. to Newfoundland to Greenland to Iceland to the British Isles.

Greenland. And, if Britain fell, Nazi planes could hop the other way. In 1916 Explorer Robert Peary pointed out: "Greenland in our hands may be a valuable piece of our defensive armor. In the hands of a hostile interest it could be a serious menace." But to the U.S. last week, Greenland's icy mountains still seemed as silent, remote and cold as a lunar landscape. So little is known about the ice cap itself (almost two miles deep, spreading over more than 80% of the island, the birthplace of storms and icebergs) that scientists cannot agree whether it is a vanishing segment of the last Ice Age, or a forerunner of the next.

The need for U.S. base sites in Greenland, almost undreamed of even a year ago, showed how rapidly Nazi conquests had changed the U.S. outlook. Last week Walter Lippmann suggested that future Nazi conquests might alter it still more. If the Nazis, after conquering Libya, should take over western Africa from the French, Germany would get a foothold at Dakar or Casablanca, where she would be nearer Brazil than is the U.S. It was elementary naval strategy that the U.S. would then need bases in the Azores or in Brazil as plainly as it now needs bases in Greenland.

* Last week the State Department revealed that these parties had been "cleared out," did not say how.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.