New Republic

Last week the northwesternmost outpost of Europe moved a little closer to the U.S. By vote of its 1,011-year-old Althing ("Grandmother of Parliaments"), Iceland cut its last ties with Nazi-ruled Denmark, renounced the sovereignty of Danish Christian X, moved to establish a republic.

This was not unexpected. Since World War I a treaty of union has bound Iceland to Denmark only by loyalty to the same crown. The treaty promised Icelanders the chance to review the question of independence in 1940. When the Nazis seized Denmark last spring, the Icelanders temporarily took away Christian's Icelandic prerogatives and handed them over to the Cabinet. Last week's act only legitimized a state of separation caused by war, conquest, blockade.

The stolid statesmen of Reykjavik, measured and dignified in all things, erected their new order with utmost constitutional correctness. Until a republic should be established, able, revered Svein Bjornsson, Icelandic envoy to Copenhagen, was named regent. There was no need to create a new diplomatic service: Iceland had already planted a set of stalwart Vikings in world capitals after the Nazis captured Denmark last year. As for protocol, Premier Hermann Jonasson had always got along with a staff of a secretary and a doorkeeper, and still could.

But such Nordic deliberateness could not efface the main impression. By thus voting almost unanimously to give up their King, Iceland's 118,000 farmers and fishermen showed pretty clearly how little they liked the Nazis.

The U.S. State Department, which has devoted a lot of thought to Iceland lately, showed instant signs of appreciation. The State Department announced that a new vice consul was being dispatched to represent the U.S. in Reykjavik. He was tall, blond, coolheaded, young (33) Career Diplomat Henry Bartlett Wells, known as a highly efficient fellow who has turned in excellent reports from all his posts, last of which was at the U.S. Legation in Managua, Nicaragua.

Last week rumors flew again of Nazi troop concentrations against Iceland in northern Norway. Some observers saw the pattern for invasion in the attack on Crete. Should the Nazis hazard it. they would find Iceland twelve times as large, and with a population three times as small as Crete--much better suited to parachute and glider tactics. But Iceland lies at least five times as far from nearest Nazi bases as Crete from the mainland of Greece. Since last May, when Canadian troops landed to guard armyless, navyless Iceland, the British have put, according to some reports, 80,000 men on the island.

The U.S. State Department's concern for republican Iceland is not unnatural.

For, seated as she is above north Atlantic shipping routes, Iceland matters even more than Greenland in Western Hemisphere defense.

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