EVENING POST TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 1942. NOT THE EFFECT JAPAN INTENDED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 128, 2 June 1942, Page 4

EVENING POST TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 1942. NOT THE EFFECT JAPAN INTENDED

By sending submarines into Sydney harbour the Japanese navy has moved a day's march—or rather morefarther South. No one knows what the Japanese navy's farthest South may be; .but the spirit of "it can't Happen here" has received a shock, and a salutary shock. Why people should need an actual object lesson to bring home to them war possibilities that can be demonstrated by ordinary reasoning, without any object lesson at all, is a little puzzling; but certain it is that one .ounce of fact is worth a ton of argument, so far as demonstrating the vulnerability of a city-port is concerned. A Scapa Flow submarine incident at the other end of the world registers only mildly on the public mind; some people may remember what happened at Scapa Flow two or three years ago, but an article written on that Subject last week, and containing local deductions concerning submarine action in enclosed waters, would have received only passing attention.. Now, however, it is different. Instead of somebody's saying something, the Japanese have done something. The people of Sydney, and of.Australasia, now see possibilities in a more vivid light. Facts have illustrated predictions. "It can happen here." > Have the Japanese done us a service or a disservice? Disservice, of course, is what they aimed at. Their submarines did not come to capture Sydney. The Japanese did hope, however, for a big bag of ships;,and, at the very least, they hoped that their action would have intimidatory "nuisance value." What has resulted has been the very least—that is, the submarines have proved a nuisance —but even in this least of their aims they have really done Australasia a service. The disturbance of Sydney life—if it has been disturbed —is much more than counterbalanced by the moral value of their submarine object lesson. The Japanese have awakened all sleepers; not by tiresome propaganda,/but by short, sharp bursts of fire in Sydney harbour, they have revealed in a flash where Australasia stands. This gunpowder argument ousts all other arguments. Australasia is now fully awake, and the general reaction will be not timidity, but a necessary realisation of facts hitherto not fully perceived. Morally, the morrow of the attack in Sydney finds Australasia standing more firmly, and seeing more clearly. And this awakening has not to be paid for in a big loss of ships. Providentially it happens that Sydney harbour, the harbour of sparkling Sydney night ferries, has lost only one old ferry-boat, and the occupants of a ferry-boat in transit seem to have, "seen the show" without ! stopping any of the missiles. '' ! It might have been much worse. The incident is a warning that worse has to be avoided; and that the price of avoiding it is to .be fully awake all the time to what may happen, and to be ceaselessly* on watch. In a double sense it is true that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. v If this wakefulness and determination are assured by the first of the enemy's "nuisance raids," then the enem% has done us a service, disserving himself to the extent of the unmasking of his methods and the loss of two or three small submarines. Australian morale will have but one answer to this Japanese tactical stroke, the vital factors of which are still undisclosed. The enemy has deprived himself of hjs surprise factor in this form of attack with a very poor return to himself, and without adding to his reputation for naval efficiency; but the tonic value, so far as the public are concerned, is inestimable. Our special Australian correspondent finds in the gunfire, the depthcharges, and "the searchlights splitting the darkness" of Sydney harbour evidence of Japan's intention "to disrupt shipping between the United States and -. Australia." Disruption of shipping will require, much more widespread action than that which the enemy took against Sydney on Sunday night. But at any rate it is clear that Japan has reached a hew latitude in her movement farther South; Forewarned is forearmed. Perception increases confidence. But people must turn their backs on the idea that "it can't happen here."