NAVAL SUPREMACY

Evening Star, Issue 23817, 22 February 1941, Page 12

NAVAL SUPREMACY

KEY TO BRITAIN'S POLICY DISAPPEARANCE OF WESTERN FRONT MYTH (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, February 20. A penetrating analvsis of Mr Churchill’s realisation of the importance of naval supremacy in the present phase of the war has been made by a neutral commentator giving a broadcast from Boston (United States). He said: “The very completeness of the German victories in the first half of last year enabled Mr Churchill to discard the line of strategy which Britain followed during most of the campaign between 1914-18, and which its leaders had clung to tenaciously in this war until Mr Churchill took over the Government. The German occupation of France took away one of the most pernicious sources of the theory of defeat on the Western Front. What Mr Churchill, and Mr Lloyd George before him, had been struggling to get rid of for nearly a quarter of a century was effectively liquidated at Dunkirk. “ With the disappearance of the western front myth Britain becomes united in a stategic outlook, and although the loss of France and the Low Countries was a heavy price to pay, this new unity is an immense asset and likely to take effect in the future. Mr Churchill may have only a fraction of the men that were assembled on the Allied front in 1916-17, but everything he has is effective. He may have lost most of the Continent, but the Continent is a seething mass of discontent and incipient rebellion, so that German occupation is only partially effective. Moreover, if he does not control the land, he controls the sea and the air to cover the enemy’s weak points with absolute soreness. The Navy is the key to Britain’s policy to-day.”