The Sun FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1914. THE NAVY AND THE WAR.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 186, 11 September 1914, Page 6

The Sun FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1914. THE NAVY AND THE WAR.

Nothing,in Mr Harcourt's impressive dispatch reviewing the progress of the war during the first month, is, more gratifying, than the work of the Navy. Ever since the war broke out, people have been waiting apprehensively for news of a clash between the battle squadrons, of the British and German fleets. The British Navy has been ready for an encounter ever since it put to sea at the beginning of August. But the Germans have carefully avoided a fleet action, and the only engagement of any consequence was off Heligoland when a cruiser squadron made a daring raid into German waters, and sent several of the enemy's ships to the bottom. It is niorq. than likely that the Germans decided at the beginning to reserve their navy with a view to using it in an attempted invasion of England iu the event of their campaign against France being the success they anticipated. But any such plans since gone wrong. Instead of France being quickly and effectively crushed, it is the Germans who are threatened with disaster, and so far from an investment of Paris being now in progress, according to the Kaiser's time-table, the right wing of his army is in full retreat.. Consequently the German Navy seems to be incapable of playing any prominent part in the .war unless it heroically ventures out and engages an overwhelmingly superior force under conditions that invite disaster. Meanwhile the British Navy is occupied in the more prosaic task of sweeping the North Sea clear of mines, and keeping the Germans bottled up. It is not so thrilling or spectacular as blowing them off the face of the waters like H.M.S. .Lion pulverised . the German cruiser in the Heliogoland Bight, but it is quite as useful, because it enables the; British mercantile marine to go about its business as usual, while the enemy is slowly starving through the loss of trader In the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Pacific, the German cruisers have performed no exploits of any consequence, and it is beginning to look as if they had been instructed to avoid attacks on British or French merchantmen. It is rather significant that not a single case has been reported of a German cruiser interfering with a British ship. The sinking of the Kaipara and the Nyanza was the work of a commerce destroyer, and the complete immunity British ships have experienced from German cruisers certainly suggests that the latter have preferred to remain in hiding. But the work of the Navy will be appreciated none the less because it has been useful rather than spectacular. The Navy has proved adequate and efficient. The first is a tribute to the judgment of the Liberal Government which, during the ten years it has been in power, has refused to be rushed into unnecessary expenditure, and the second is a testimony to the work of the Admiralty, under Mr Churchill, and successive sea lords who, since Sir John Fisher took charge, have made readiness for any emergency the watchword of the fleet. *