AN ALLIED LOSS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13670, 18 June 1942, Page 8

AN ALLIED LOSS

WHAT WENT WITH SINGAPORE?

“We shall soon feel the great effects of a great loss,” says the “Manchester Guardian.” “Singapore is one of the keys not to Asia only hut to the world, and its falling from our hands will be felt by the patient armies of Russia as keenly, perhaps, as we shall feel it in the North Sea, along the shores of Libya and Egypt, and in the very meals we eat here at home. At the moment when Japan’s naval strength has been enormously increased in value by the capture of the Singapore position, Germany has made it extremely ■difficult for ns to move any of our warships from European waters. We have an uncompleted task, and the Italian navy in the Mediterranean — and the Italian fleet, so long as it remains ‘in being,’ has a great ‘nuisance value’ to the Axis. In the North Sea we have a united German force whose exact strength we do not know, though we can expect the daring of its use to make it formidable enough."