IMPORTANCE OF SEA-POWER

Southland Times, Issue 24447, 29 May 1941, Page 5

IMPORTANCE OF SEA-POWER

“The Axis Powers can never achieve the objective of world domination unless they first obtain control of the seas. This is their supreme purpose today, and to achieve it they must capture Britain. But if they fail to gain control of the seas they will certainly be defeated. Their dreams of world domination will then go by the board and the criminal leaders will suffer inevitable disaster. That is why they are risking everything in desperate attempts to break through to command the seas. Once they are limited to continuing a land war, their cruel forces of occupation will be unable to keep their heel on the necks of millions of innocent, oppressed peoples on the Continent of Europe and in the end their whole structure will break into little pieces. Even those Italians and Germans who themselves have been enslaved will prove to be a powerful force in disrupting the Nazi system. “The Battle of the Atlantic now extends from the icy waters of the North Pole to the frozen continent of the Antarctic. Throughout this huge area there have been sinkings of merchant ships in alarmingly increasing numbers by Nazi raiders or submarines. The blunt truth is—and I reveal this with the full knowledge of the British Government—that the present rate of Nazi sinkings of merchant ships is more than three times as high as the capacity of British shipyards to replace them. It is more than twice the combined British and American output of merchant ships. “Today we can answer this peril by

two simultaneous measures. First, by speeding up and increasing our great shipbuilding programme and, second, by helping to cut down the losses on the high seas. Attacks on shipping off the very shores we are determined to protect present an actual military danger to the Americas. That danger has recently been heavily underlined by the presence in Western Hemisphere waters of Nazi battleships of great striking power. Most of the supplies for Britain go by the northerly route, which comes close to Greenland and Iceland. Germany’s heaviest attack is on that route. IMPORTANCE OF BASES The Nazi occupation of Iceland or bases in Greenland would bring the war close to our continental shores because they are stepping stones to Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and the northern United States, including the great industrial centres of the north-east and middle west. Equally, the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands, if occupied or controlled by Germany, would directly endanger the freedom of the Atlantic and our own physical safety. Under German domination they would become bases for submarines, warships and aeroplanes raiding the waters which lie immediately off our own coast and attacking shipping in the South Atlantic. They would provide a springboard for actual attack against the integrity and independence of Brazil and her neighbouring republics. I have said on many occasions that the United States is mustering her men and resources only for the purpose of defence, only to repel attack.