UNIFIED CONTROL OF ALLIED NAVIES.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 14236, 2 March 1917, Page 3

UNIFIED CONTROL OF ALLIED NAVIES.

MAY SHORTLY TAKE PLACE. I

PROTECTIVE MEASURES AGAINST HUN SUBMARINES.

LONDON, January 19. Not by battles alone are wars won. Balfour's footnote to the Allies' reply to President Wilson may be worth a good many trenches or sea raids for its effect on both sides of tho Atlantic. Balfour may have lost caste as an executive, and niay be ill-fitted for the hurlyburly of war, but he is a master dialectician. He knows how to visualise m perspective and make his pictures comprehensible..

If America could hear more frequently from such men as Balfour and Lloyd George, there would be no need for the sort of propagandism m tbe United States now discussed, perhaps entered '"nto, by the British Government. Only :i complete misunderstanding qf American conditions could draw" Great Britain into meeting Germany's effort n kind. • . '

In the Atlantic raid Germany appears •it her best and worst. In such enter' prises she shows skill, desperate courage, •md results within certain bounds, but the reaction both m Germany and Great Tiritain may leave a balance on the debit side. The success of the raider inflames an already insane, passion for the spectacular m Germany. The good old German traits of patience and industry are disappearing m the frenzied domination of Prussianism.

The reaction from the Atlantic raid will be beneficial m England, arousing a new initiative for naval action. It came it a time when protective measures against the submarines were at tbe point of decision, and when a unified control •f the Allied navies, which has been under consideration, may be brought to i practical Basis by the stirring events m the Atlantic.

The most aggressive man m Great Britain has not been' much heard from since taking charge of the Admiralty!, Sir Edward Carson's lying quiet for a whole month with all "the great power '>< the British fleet m his hands might be the forerunner of a perfarmj.nce appropriately overtured by the German raider. - , '

This liveliness m waters contiguous to Monroe doctrine territory suggests a .consideration of an aspect of the freedom of the seas the reverse of that commonly considered m American discussion. Usually, when any prominent American goes to Germany and dines with the Kaiser, he comes away with y. big mouthful of the freedom of the seas, which means an attempt to start a cry m America that will swallow up and survive other cries and manufacture sentiment to help the Kaiser overcome British naval superiority. If that could be accomplished, the first result would be to drive America to the naval extension necessary for protecting herself and her Monroe doctrine, instead of enjoying her o_d -time free ride on the British fleet.. Such visits as these of a German raider off the Gulf of Mexico, and of a submarine off Nantucket, should provoke real discussion of the freedom of the seas, which has often been the "froth of sloppy thinking."