DANIELS TAKES A HAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 114, 13 May 1920, Page 4

DANIELS TAKES A HAND.

I Another Daniel come to judgment, 'surely! Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the United Statfe Navy, who, during the Wilson occupancy of the Presidential office, would have been regarded in the service of which he is the political head solely as a screaming joke if a recognition of his great opportunities to do harm had not tempered the laughter, bas I told the Senate Naval Investigation ComImittee in effect, if not in so many words, that the American Navy won the war. The picture he drew of that colossal egotist Woodrow dissatisfaction with British naval policy up to the; end of the summer of 1917, and bis efforts to put a little ginger into their operations, will live in history. Did it never down on the serious Presidential .mind when the reply was made to his amateur suggestions that "it has never I been done in that way before," that even such a sober body as that in control of naval affairs at Whitehall is not entirely above the use of irony. Mr. Wilson's message to the Navy of his own people contains two gems, in his direction "to [throw tradition to the winds, to strike the word prudent from their vocabularies, and to act audaciously to the utmost point of risk and daring," and the bombastic assertion, "I am willing to sacrifice half of the navies of the United States and Britain to crush the submarine nests." And what did the ' American Navy really do to justify its claim to be a war winner! RearAdmiral Benson, in his evidence, a few: ■day 3 ago, said: "The American Fleet was retained in. home waters to protect the' coasts in the event of the Germans breaking the British cordon." This policy was ' maintained until within a few months of the armistice, when a number of capital ships joined the Grand Fleet. Up to ) that time America was represented in European waters by a few torpedo destroyer flotillas and auxiliary patrols. Even the major portion of the escorting of America's army across the Atlantic had to be undertaken by the already heavily-burdened British Fleet. "Sacrificing the fleets" too at Zeezrugge and Ostend to exterminate submarine nests, although undertaken late in the war, was not an exploit in which the fleet from across Atlantic participated. To a Britisher, who is of course unfortunately open to the charge of prejudice, it would seem that the amour propre of the United ! States Navy has been sadly wounded by 'the candid criticism-of his own service by Admiral Sims, the firsfc officer sent across to co-operate with the British, and his very generous praise of the part played by the British Navy throughout the long war. The consequence has evidently been a serious squabble in the United States Navy itself, and the public has been admitted, as is so often the case in the affairs of the great Kepubiic, to be witnesses to an unseemly wrangle.