Armed Hands across the Border

In the House of Commons at Ottawa, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, pink of face and neatly dressed in brown, rose beside his front bench last week with some news for the whole world. Canada and the U.S., he announced, have agreed to continue their wartime military collaboration in peacetime.

The Prime Minister was careful to state that this is no "treaty" or "contractual obligation." Either nation can stop the collaboration at any time. It is only a "working arrangement," a bilateral declaration of principles intended to clear the air of wild rumors about U.S.-Canadian military intentions in the Arctic. The gist of the agreement is that the two countries will exchange military observers and armed-service personnel; they will make their military, naval and air facilities available to each other; they will try to standardize weapons.

No Bases. With an eye on Russia, which has rumbled about U.S. "imperialism" in the Arctic, the Prime Minister carefully noted that the U.S. has not asked for Canadian bases. But military men in both the U.S. and Canada were quite sure that a network of Arctic radar listening posts and weather stations, at least, would be established and jointly manned by both nations.

Said Mr. King: "What we are trying to do is to view the situation soberly, realistically and undramatically. . . . The polar regions assume new importance. ... In consequence, we must think and learn more about those regions. When we think of the defense of Canada, we must, in addition to looking East and West as in the past, [consider] the North as well."

As in wartime, the details on what has been done and what is being planned by the U.S.-Canadian Permanent Joint Board on Defense will be secret. So, for the time being, will details of how the expenses will be shared.

No Surprise. Few were surprised, and only Communists were angered, by Mr. King's announcement. Actually, U.S. and Canadian military men have been working together all along. Since war's end the armed forces of both nations have been experimenting to see how machines would function and how men could live and fight in the Arctic. The Canadian Army's "Musk-Ox" expedition (TIME, Feb. 25, 1946), on which U.S. observers went along, was one test. So was the U.S. "Operation Frostbite"--the northern trip of the aircraft carrier Midway, which carried a Canadian observer. The U.S.Army's midwinter tests of men and machines in 60DEG-below-zero weather in Alaska and in the Aleutians this year also have had Canadian observers on hand.

So Canadians, whose sovereignty would be involved in any joint Arctic establishments, took the news of the agreement calmly. In Moscow, the New Times, as expected, squawked that the U.S. was "turning Canada . . . into its own military base." But many Canadians thought that the trouble with the agreement was that it did not go far enough. Said the Montreal Star: "Whether the U.S. seeks bases or not, no effective defense arrangements can be made without bases. There can and should be bases manned and operated by the two countries in collaboration."

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