AN ORDINARY MAN’S VIEW OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 70, 15 December 1939, Page 10

AN ORDINARY MAN’S VIEW OF THE WAR

We’re In The Navy Now

SOBER FACT OF WHAT SEA POWER MEANS

(By

Observer.)

There is something about a naval engagement which appeals with greater force to us who are British than any other kind of clash in warfare. A bad reverse on the sea depresses, a victory exalts, our spirits as nothing else iu loss or gain iu arms quite can do. The explanation, of course, is that flic sea is the very life of us. Leaving the history-book glories of British sea achievements out of it, aud laying aside the pleasant sentimentality of Britannia as ruler of the waves, what remains? One sober fact. If iu war we were compelled to forfeit the command of the seas we, as an Empire, would be literally and absolutely done for.

For weeks Nazi pocket battleships have damaged our commerce, though to a relatively small degree. Through one such raider, we have reason to believe, the Dorie Star, full of the produce of our own country, was sunk. It was a sharp illustration of what our predicament would be if the enemy's navy and not our own were in command of the trade routes. There is all the difference to us between two or three marauders at large and the enemy iu full naval control of our military aud economic destiny. It should be a cause for satisfaction to this Dominion that one of its cruisers, H.M.S. Achilles, with New Zealanders among her company, played an outstanding part in rounding up the Admiral Graf Spee. We cau say that, to a humble though proud extent, we are iu the navy now. Keen Eyes in R.A.F.—A New Zealand pilot training in the R.A.F. in England wrote in a letter received by his mother in Welliugton this week: “I have been transferred to a new squadron and have just been advised, to my joy, that I hold my old squadron record for high level bombing—a 55 yards error from 10,060 feet with eight bombs.” Off duty, too, this young man evidently has a keen eye. He and a chum, also from Wellington, met a gang of card sharps in a train one day. He describes his experience: “You know the old trick of a pea under a walnut shell, and you bet ou which has the pea under it. One of the gang did a similar thing with three cards, and you had to pick the ace. He gave a few free goes to begin with and, in. his excitement to draw us into the game, dropped the ace on the floor and bent the corner over a bit. I apparently was the only one to notice this, and as a consequence won £7.”

Woman’s Wartime Rules. — That admirable paper “Home and Country” quotes four rules for the use of ordinary people in wartime. lam told that they survive from the last war, but they are still as good as new. Here they are: “Obey every public order, however silly you think it.” “Believe, nothing anyone tells you, however wise you think it.” “If your legs shake (as the boldest will at times) eat glucose barley sugar.” “When in doubt do anything you would have done if there were no war.”