Canton Compromise

For well over a century no one cared who owned Canton and Enderbury Islands, two desolate coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean some 1,850 miles southwest of Hawaii. But Canton's reef-enclosed lagoon is one of the best seaplane bases in the Pacific, flat Enderbury is an equally good landplane base. To Great Britain, which claimed Canton and Enderbury as part of its Phoenix group, President Roosevelt last March put out a strong feeler by proclaiming that the U. S. was assuming possession of both islands, presumably by virtue of their discovery by 18th-Century U. S. whaling captains (TIME, March 14). The Department of Interior last spring landed four colonists on Enderbury, five on Canton.

Last week the feeler led to a peaceable compromise. Washington and London simultaneously announced an agreement for joint use of the islands for commercial aviation, pigeonholed the pesky question of sovereignty for future determination. A feeler extended at the same time, still dangling: President Roosevelt's claim for the U. S. of nearly 300,000 square miles of icy Antarctica discovered by the second Byrd Expedition in 1933-34.

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