Sea Power Will Win

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 23, 27 January 1940, Page 1 (Supplement)

Sea Power Will Win

TO-DAY, as has been the case throughout the history of the British Empire, the Royal Navy occupies a proud position as the first line of our defence. In this strange war which we are now waging the supremacy of the British Navy has had an important bearing on the policy of the Allies. Because of its power Allied shipping has been maintained and German merchant shipping has been driven off the seas. Because of its effectiveness the Allied blockade of Germany seems already assured. To New Zealand as to tlie rest of the British Dominions the watchful guard of the Royal Navy has meant security from attack, and the safe convoy of our troops to the theatre of war. For the Navy as for the rest of our fighting forces there are different problems to he faced in this struggle. There is, to-day, no German High Seas Fleet, hut there is the Fame menace of the German U-boat, and of mines, that was faced in the Great War. The Navy is dealing with them in a fashion most discouraging to any fantastic hopes which the Germans may have had. There are, too, the German pocket-battleship raiders. How the British Navy can deal with them has been shown in the gallant victory achieved by the three cruisers, Exeter, Ajax and Achilles. Britain's Navy lias shown the world that it is the same "sure shield and buckler" that, it has been since it first gave to England the glorious title of "Mistress of the Seas." As is illustrated on this page, Britain has the ships; as has been shown in action she also has the men. Sea power will win this war as surely as it has won other wars. The British are an island race; dependent for almost all the necessities of daily life on seaborne supplies. Our enemies also depend on such supplies for their power to wage war. We are in a position, and more firmly so than ever before, to deny such supplies to our enemies and to secure them for ourselves. In addition, however, to the grand ships nf the "regular" Navy, there are a host of small-vessels and other auxiliary craft, which are engaged in day-to-day tasks of danger, mine-sweeping and the like. The Great War won for these craft a tradition as magnificent in its way as that of the first-line ships. Some of the most heroic talcs of that struggle were related about auxiliary vessels, and already in this war the Rawalpindi has written another glorious chapter. The Dover Patrol is, in this war, even more than in the last, the most joyous and popular of all naval operations, a young man s show. Senior officers there are ashore, condemned to what the i-inior calls a stuffy office—while he is on the open bridge of a destroyer under easy steam at 25 knots through wind and spray that cut like a knife—but supplying the careful staff work and thought which permits the patrol to cover every square mile of its area with a small-mesh net. Only an occasional senior officer is to be found afloat, generally a gallant veteran who has defied time and the Admiralty's ideas of the age limit of an ofheer s utility and who has sunk his high rank to get to sea again in a mucii junior grade in the Royal Naval Reserve. "Disrated Admirals the irreverent junior officers call them, but there is no real lack of respect. In some wavs the patrol is much less interesting than it was from 1914 to 1919, because the Germans have not the hold on the Belgian coast which kept our ships busy bombarding, and which let their fast ships **et into our lines in a matter of minutes —on the few occasions when they ventured to trv it. But essentially it is just the same, and just as monotonous, with the same chances of sudden excitement, as it was tlisn. The Dover Patrol is one of the most-hated British institutions in Germany. In 1914 the ex-Kaiser insisted on basing-his naval schemes on the anticipation of a close blockade of the Heligoland Bight, with British warships in a cordon making tempting targets for his submarines until they had worn us down to tile strength of the High Seas 1- Icet and a fleet action was justified. His naval advisers who tried to tell him that such methods went out with the nineteenth century soon learned to keep silent. The British Navy refused to play this German game, and in its stead established the "Distant Blockade" maintained bv the Grand 1 Icet m the north and the Dover Patrol in the south, enclosing the whole area of the North Sea. So it is in this war; the Dover Patrol holds the southern gate of the North Sea. To relieve the pressure the German to must meet til. Grand Fleet, which it obviously cannot do, or else break up the Do\cr Patrol bv pre-arranged action with forces outside, which must e ct through the outer British lines. Small as its chances seem, the latter plan is tliL more hopeful, or perhaps the less hopeless, so that the pa rm itina be on the alert and must never allow the monotony of the ordinary routine