AUSTRALIA'S DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 172, 22 July 1940, Page 6

AUSTRALIA'S DAY.

Land, sea or air—it is all the same to the Australian; he has -proved himself a great fighter in all three services. His latest exploit, the sinking of the Bartolomeo Colleoni, sets the seal on the fame already won when the first ship to take the name of Sydney town to sea sank the Emden in the last war. The newer Sydney had a bigger opportunity, and she seized it to make the fullest possible use of it. To rout two ships each as powerfully armed as herself, to sink ona and to put the other to ignominious flight, was a feat which could only have been performed 1 by good seamanship and first-class gunnery, backed by that do or die spirit which has been the outstanding characteristic of the Australian wherever he has fought. The open spaces have bred independence and initiative in the Australian to a degree which made some of the old sea dogs declare that he was! temperamentally unsuited to the rigorous discipline and routine of a warship. The critics know better now. The crew of the Sydney was home-made; her captain was a product of the Australian Naval College, her officers and crew were trained in Australian waters, and they have shown beyond shadow of question that they know their job, in strategy, I

in seamanship and in fighting their guns. The Sydney had an established reputation for accuracy of gunfire in the truce between the wars; she lived fully up to that reputation under the strain of conflict, and New Zealanders, remembering with pride the part which their own t;oiis played aboard the Achilles in the battle of the River Plate, heard of the victory with as great enthusiasm as did the city of Sydney itself. The exploit is a great tribute to the training course in Australia, and it supports the suggestion thrft the preliminary training of New Zealand officers for our own squadron might be carried out in Australia rather than sending the cadets to the English colleges.