In the Far East

Red Russia's Ambassador to Great Britain, amiable little Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky, trotted around to No. 9 Downing Street one day last week to reiterate the Soviet Union's first concrete complaint against British war behavior. On Jan. 13, British warships off Formosa stopped the Red freighter Selenga, en route from a Chinese port to Vladivostok with a cargo of tin, antimony and wolframite (tungsten ore). They took the Selenga clear to Hong Kong for examination, on the suspicion that the metals were destined for Germany via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Last week the Selenga and her cargo were still detained at Hong Kong, when in came the Vladimir Mayakovsky, also under British escort. She had 4,000 tons of U. S. copper and a lot of molybdenite aboard, cleared from Manzanillo on Mexico's west coast and San Pedro, Calif. She, too, was bound for Vladivostok. Her cargo, too, was suspect as contraband for Germany.

Lord Halifax gave Ambassador Maisky no satisfaction, despite the latter's oath that the cargoes were entirely for Soviet consumption, not reexport to Germany, and his legal point that Russia's ships are State-owned, hence not subject to seizure. Presently it was announced that British officials at Hong Kong had turned both Red freighters over to their allies, the French, who were taking them to a port in Indo-China for further scrutiny. Report was that the officers & crew of the Selenga, refusing to submit, were placed under arrest. It seemed a cinch that neither Russia nor Germany would soon receive those particular tons of copper, tin, antimony, wolframite, molybdenite.

The seizure of these Red ships constituted new affronts direct to Germany's big, silent partner, and made good the promise of Minister of Economic Warfare Ronald Cross to the House of Commons that due watch would be kept on Germany's economic back door through Asia (TIME, March 11).

So vast are the Orient oceans, so wide the trade routes leading over them to Dairen and Vladivostok, that any airtight blockade of Germany's Asian door is unthinkable. The distance across Siberia (6,000 miles), plus the fact that the Reds are hustling to build electrical, steel and shipbuilding industries in Eastern Siberia, gave Mr. Maisky's oath a ring of honesty.

Nevertheless there are stories afloat that German naval technicians have lately visited Russian submarine bases in the Komandorskie Islands off Kamchatka, and at Possiet (Whale) Bay just southwest of Vladivostok. At the latter place, German military police are reported in full charge, fitting the harbor as a raiding base for German submarines transported in pieces over the Trans-Siberian and assembled on Asia's eastern edge.

Besides Army and air bases on the Kamchatka Peninsula proper, icebound in winter, the Reds are said to have established submarine advance bases on Beringa and Medny Islands, which the Japan Current keeps ice-free the year round. Little 250-ton U-boats such as Germany would find easy to send overland could operate only 1,000 miles from Beringa and Medny, but that would be far enough to cross Canada's trade lanes to the North Orient. Submarines of 500 tons or more, which Germany might buy or lease from Russia, who has plenty of them, could range at least twice as far, though not far enough to interfere with the supply line for men, wool and food from Australia and New Zealand to the western seats of war. Possiet Bay (except in winter) would be even handier than the Komandorskies for Germany as a Far East raiding base.

To blockade German war imports via Siberia the Allies must operate from the great British naval base at Singapore and the French naval base at Saigon, the French anchorage at Cam-ranh Bay, a harbor big enough to shelter, coal and provision 45 warships of the Russian Fleet during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Hong Kong, Haiphong, port for Hanoi, may serve as contraband control ports.

Still holed up in such Netherlands Indies ports as Batavia, Surabaya and Padang are a score of German freighters which have kept off the seas since September. Many of them have hocked their machinery to guarantee their mounting port charges. Last week came word that several of these ships had redeemed their equipment, started loading copra, kapok, rubber, oils, to dash for Vladivostok.

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