Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1944. ALLIED SUPREMACY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 64, Issue 212, 19 June 1944, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1944. ALLIED SUPREMACY.

, The King’s visit to the beachhead in Normandy, even more than the visit by Mr Churchill, gives unmistakeable evidence of the supremacy of the United Nations over the Germans. Although the invasion of Europe has not far progressed beyond a bridgehead, the background to this statement is that the Allies have complete command of the air and the sea; setbacks if they come can be only temporary. Too little attention has been given to the inestimable value of the control of the seas exercisd by the Royal Navy round the coasts of France, of Germany, or Norway and in the Mediterranean. Germany, when she commencd this war, thought that by the use of certain powerful battleships and cruisers, coupled with an overwhelming air arm, she could nullify the power of the British Fleet. After painful months the great ships of the German Navy are either sunk or out of action. Our own fleets have been vastly expanded; the submarine menace has been overcome. In the result our ships both control the trade routes and dominate the invasion coasts. The very air power which Hitler and his advisers thought would rise superior to naval inferiority has been wrenched from them. The Air Forces of Great Britain and the United States have contributed very largely to the defeat of the' Germans in Africa, to their expulsion from Southern Italy, to their disasters in Russia and now to the successful landing in France. Our everincreasing power on the sea and in. the air is a prime element in the doom of Germany. Hitler has no means of countering it.