BRITAIN'S POWER

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 30, 4 August 1917, Page 6

BRITAIN'S POWER

THE KEYSTONE OF THE

ALLIANCE

EVERYTHING- RESTS OIF THE : , ■ .:■■ NAVY,: ' '-■■:.,_ ■■

An-aridcte'by. Mr. Sydney Brooks, in ifche •National-Geographic Magazine, wovided for American readers an admirable summary of Britain's share of the Allied task in the war, combined with a

striking impression of the regeneration of the British nation" and'the' great changes which have accompanied its war effort. One of the most graphic sections of the article dealt with the work and influence of the British Navy upon the •struggle. I like to think, , wrote Mr. Brooke, of some future Mahan^.usingthe history, of this war to point the, deadly realities of sea-power. He will need no other example. Everything that naval supremacy means or can ever, mean has been taught in a fashion that he who runs may read. Suppose Great Britain had remained neutral and the British Navy had never moved. What, would have happened? The German and Austrian dreadnoughts, with a five-to^nel preponderance over the combined dread-; nought strength, of France and Russia,j would have held an easy command over the sea. -Germany could then have supplemented- her land ..attack by dis- | embarking. troops on both the Russian and French coasts in the rear of the Russian and French armies; she would have shut off all the French' overseas trade; she would have captured or driven 1 port practically the whole of !■ the French and. Russian merchant ma-, rine; France would have been blockI aded; with her • chief industrial provinces in German occupation, she would have been prevented from importing any food, any raw material, .any munitions'; while Germany would have been free to draw: on'the resources of the entire world. In less than six months, for all her magnificent valour, France could nob but have-surrendered. ; ■ v:: That \ was' the Prussian' calculation, and it was a perfectly sound one;: but' it fell, like ■ a house of' cards when Britain intervened. Instead of securing at once the command of the '• sea, Germany lost it at once. . Everything that she had hoped to. inflict upon France and ;Russia by maritime supremacy -.was in-fact inflicted upon .herself. What Has made it possible for-us to laiid some 2,000,00Q men on the Continent., of Europef-equipped .with every' single item in the infinitely varied paraphernalia of modern war? ■ How have we been- able' to conduct simultaneous campaigns in Egypt, East Africa, the • Cameroons, South-West Africa, the Balkans, and the Pacific? There are Russian-troops fighting at this moment in France and round Salonika. How did they get : there? From all the ends of the earfe British subjects in hundreds . upoa hundreds of thousands have flocked to the central battlefield.- What power protected .them? -.■.-.

The United .-.States has built'up with' the Allies a trade that throws all previous American experience of foreign commbrce! into the shade.' ."But how many Americans, I. wonder, stop to ask themselves how it is that this vast volume of' merchandise has crossed the! Atlantic in. the .-.midst of.. the greatest war in all history almost as swiftly andsecurely as in the days of: profoundest peace? ... ■ . . . . j

One by. one' Germany's., colonies - ha-W been torn .from/her jpasp—those oversea! possessions, the children of so many* ■hopes, *he scenes of such unremittingt labour, the nursing plots- or such vasfl ambitions; and not a single. blow has been struck in defence of them by the. Fatherland itself. One and all have* had to Tely on their own isolated and local efforts. They have looked in vain to Germany.- Germany—paralysed- by, ■what power? held down in helplessness by ,what mysterious spell?—has. im'potently watched her beginnings of a world empire shattered beneatli^. her eyes. How is it, again,: that the Belgian' army has been re-armed," reconstituted, and re-equipped? How is it that the Servian- forces have similarly been* rescued and remade? How is it that Russia has been remunitioned, that Italy has-been enabled to overcome her national deficiencies, that France, in spite of the loss' of soroeio-f her.most highly industrialised districts,- is still, for purposes both of war and of commerce, ■.» great manufacturing nation, and that the Allies can import freely what they Meet from the neutral world?

To what übiquitous and unshakabb power, stretching from Iceland to the Equator and back again, guarding all the oceans', girdling the whole world, axe these miracles due? -They are due to just one thing—the British Navy. Because, of the' British Navy, Germany is a beleaguered garrison,, her . strength steadily,. ceaselessly sapping away; her people languishing, physically under, the stress of the blockade,; and financially and economically under the total loss of; her foreign trade. . . ■ . | Defeat the British Navy and the-war| is over, in six weeks. . There lies Gor-.j many's nearest: road, not only to. peace, but- to full and final victory. -Take away from the GtaM.Alliance the support of the British Navy, and the .whole structure^ collapses into nothingness. Our control of the oceans-is not a_.mere adjunct to the strength of the.Alliance., It is its bases. It supports the whole edifice. Without it all, that .the.. Allies; have built would crumble to pieces. With! it they can erect, as on a rock, the: instruments of certain victory.;-.-, .- i