SATURDAY. APRIL, Pi. 19-10. BRITAIN IN ACTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 88, 13 April 1940, Page 8

SATURDAY. APRIL, Pi. 19-10. BRITAIN IN ACTION.

Before the war complaint- were lnud and long that the British ' Jovernment wa- not only -low to act. but that it -eemed to have become incapable of acting at all. (JeTmanv. by a series of bold, resolute strokes, was altering tlie map of Europe, but Britain, it .-eemed, did nothing but protest again-t accomplished facts. Kven since the war began similar complaint.- have been heard, (lennany had the initiative, and Britain— Britain was using its Air Force to drop pamphlets. Superficial though such criticism may have been, it had enough justification to make it piausible. Butj criticism along those lines will be silenced by the events of the last few day-, events which

mark a turning-point in the war. Germany at the beginning of the week made that long-expected hut loner-deferred stroke which had heen the Mibject of so much speculation. It was a hold stroke, which perhaps nearly succeeded. Denmark \vainvaded and subdued in a momma. Norway was invaded at several points; her capital city wa» captured. This was a spectacular achievement. But what has happened since? We have heard sufficient to show us that Britain took up the challenge so quickly and so resolutely that she has snatched the initiative from Germany in a venture of Germany's own choosing- and timing. Last week Germany seemed to be establishing diplomatic domination in the Baltic. At the beginning of this week she set out to secure her domination by military action. Now, at the end of the week, Norway is on the side of the Allies, a substantial part of the German naval force has been destroyed and the Reich is virtually ,c*ut off from access to the North Sea.

For this reversal of the Nazis' fortunes we have to thank, primarily and chiefly, the Royal Navy. Seldom in its long history can the Navy hare been put to the test of action so diverse and so long sustained. _ The full story cannot yet be told—if for no other reason than that the act-ion still continues —but enough has been divulged to make it clear that many new pages will be written in the records of seamanship, resource and gallantry. And the ironical fact is that the Navy's opportunity was provided by Hitler hiniself. It is widely believed that most of Hitler's previous coups were undertaken against the counsel of his expert advisers. History one day will reveal whether the German Naval Staff counselled their Fuehrer to risk in this enterprise not only a military force—which after all is but a tiny part of the still-undefeated German Army—but his Navy. It is unlikely that they did. If the responsibility was his alone, the world will remember him as an evir genius who knew nothing of the meaning of sea power—and learned it, too late, all in a week. In the meanwhile, we have the spectacle, as heartening to us as it is shattering to the schemes of our enemy, of Britain in action.