THE NAVY'S PART.

Bruce Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 50, 4 July 1918, Page 4

THE NAVY'S PART.

A naked mass of steel, fitted only for lighting purposes, the pick and pride of the British Fleet, is somewhere in tho vicinity of the North Sea—removed from" the eyes of the world, yet well remembered. There is a danger at this time, when the fiercest fighting of the war has been and is in progress, -that | the great part the Navy has played | and is playing in the world's greatest | struggle will be overlooked. Germany has been driven into this mad and futile waste of men solely by the pressure of sea-power. The economic stranglehold of the blockade has reduced the condition of tho German civil population to desperation, its moral also to zero, and the great offensive in the West is at bottom but a gigantic effort to break away—by forcing a peace—the inexorable shackles of soa-power. If we think of what Germany has done in nearly four years of war, 'and the effort of which she is still capable, and visualise what she would have 'been had the seas been even partially open to her, we may have some idea of the calamity that would have the world. Her material strength would have been much greater; infinitely greater would have been lier moral strength and the stamina of her people. The terrific sacrifice she began on March 21 would never have been forced upon her. Seapower is the source of our own strength as it is of the enemy's driving weakness. Cut for the Navy the Kaiser would have been through with his programme three years ago. It was along the safe road held by the Fleet that the "Old Contemp€bles" passed to the defence of Paris, and it is along that same road, as safe as ever despite the IT boats, that are passing every hour those reinforcements of men and munitions that will seal the end of the Kaiser's hopes to-day. Germany has escaped the ultimate penalties of naval defeat only by keeping her fighting ships in hiding. It is unlikely that by taking over ships of the Russian Baltic Fleet 'or in any other way she has appreciably reduced the considerable margin of superiority possessed by the 'British Navy, and taking account of the American capital ships which are now co-operating with our own Grand Fleet, it is certain that the allied 'blockade is supported and maintained by an overwhelming body of force. Attempting to 'break the blockade, Germany would simply give the n allied fleets, and particularly the British Navy) the opportunity which has been long and eagerly awaited. On the other hand) it is by n'o means improbable that she may send but the High Seas Fleet in a forlorn hope attack upon the allied sea communications between England and France.