Our Great Debt to the Navy

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16358, 1 November 1918, Page 6

Our Great Debt to the Navy

Citizens will be afforded an opportunity to-day of emptying their pockets for the benefit of one of the best of all the war funds —that which has been promoted by the Navy League in the interests of the men of the Navy who have been wounded or incapacitated in the war, and of the dependants of the officers and men who have been killed. We have frequently reminded the public that the foundation of the whole Allied cause has been the work of our great Navy. It has been to the Allied cause what the silent and invisible atmosphere is to man. Without it Britain could not have saved France at the beginning of the war; and later it has been the Navy that has enabled the enemy to he checked and finally brought to the defeat that will be admitted almost any day now. It has been the salvation of this country and of every scrap of British territory in the world. But for its unsleeping vigilance and omnipresent power, our coasts would have been open to the invader, our communications, with the outer world destroyed, our economic life brought to ruin. This aspect of tho case has been emphasised in tho appeal issued by the president of the local branch of the Navy League, Mr Alex. Boyle, who lays stress upon the extraordinarily tsmall and inadequate sum that the protection afforded by tho Navy has cost us. If tho Navy were an institution which sold-protection to those who required it, no sum could be too great to pay for its services. We cannot pay or subscribe what the Navy has been worth to us, nor are wo asked to. All that we are asked to do is to make a thank-offering, and we are sure that everyone will strive to-day to do bis utmost to make that thank-offering worthy of us. What is the NavyP It is not a machine—a mere great organisation of ships and guns. The officers and men are the Navy; Britain's seapower 'is not a mass of iron, but the great force of courage, fortitude, and skill *n the men who patrol the seas in the long nights of storm and darkness, watching and waiting month after month and year after year, in the stifling heat of tropic seas, or in thi deadly cold of sub-Arctic winters, ready always for death in a welter of flame and flood. For thousands of them this death has been the end of their service, and for many others the end has been broken lives, wounds, and suffering We m this far-off Dominion have betn the beneficiaries of this brave and patient service and these wounds and death, and we are asked to-day to unite in paying a little of what wo owe by making life easier for the wounds seamen and for the widows and orphans of those who have died for us, and for the world. It was their service an J sacrifice that made life easy for us, an a duty rests upon everyone to ropy some of the debt to-day.