The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo and The Sun. THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 1940. WAR BROUGHT HOME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 145, 20 June 1940, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo and The Sun.

THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 1940. WAR BROUGHT HOME.

For the cause that lacks aorntancc, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

New Zealand has suddenly relearned the unpleasant fact that a war originating in Europe is not to be eonfined within the boundaries of Europe. It cannot with certainty be prevented from directly affecting New Zealand. Its indirect effects, of course, began to be felt from the' day, and even before the day, on which violent hostilities began; but tt/itil yesterday niany people harboured the illusion that the war would continue to be something far away. Last night there returned to Auckland hundreds of men, women and children who were, in a sense, war refugees. They had left Auckland on Tuesday with full confidence of enjoying a normal voyage to the Pacific Coast, but while still off the New Zealand coast their ship was sunk, and they were lucky to escape with their lives. The time, the location and the weather after the disaster all favoured them. Thie disaster, the Prime Minister has informed Parliament, was caused by a mine. The subsequent finding of another mine, he said, "answers any question as to how the Niagara met her fate." So the crew and passenger* of the ship who returned to Auckland last night must be presumed the victims of enemy action, as were the crews and passengers of the Port Kembla and the Wimmera during the last war, also at times when most people imagined the Dominion to be immune from its direct consequences. The first feeling is one of thankfulness that no life was lost yesterday, nor was anyone injured. So fortunate an outcome was hardly to be expected. But a valuable ship, with her mails and cargo, has been lost. It would be unprofitable in the absence of full information to speculate on the circumstances leading up to this loss, and the shock —severe, though temporary—which it has given the Dominion. But if a mine Las been found it is reasonably presumed that it was laid from an enemy craft, that other mines may have been laid, and that others may be laid in the future. The work of -sweeping the courses customarily used by trading vessels is not difficult,- and no doubt it will be done thoroughly and soon. It is" more difficult to detect the approach of a mine-laying craft—but not so difficult as it was in the last war, when aviation was in its infancy. Air reconnaissance, more thorough and widespread than any hitherto undertaken, seems now obviously necessary. This, and other measures which need not be specified, should be taken without delay. And not only in onr own interests. If the Niagara had been a produce ship, outward bound, the loss would have been Britain's .as well as our own, and the kind of loss which we must do absolutely everything that it is within our power to do to avert.