FREE FRENCH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 60, 3 June 1942, Page 6

FREE FRENCH

A. V. ALEXANDER TELLS WHAT THE NAVY IS DOING Criticisms and grumibling about the failure or lack of foresight of the Government in relation to equipment were answered by Mr A. V. Alexander; First Lord of the Admiralty, at a Southport meeting for the town's "Warship Week" which began on February 11. "I wonder," he : said, "lioav many people realise how much has been accomplished. The British Army lost in France more than half the total army equipment that then existed for Britain in the world. "Ever since then we have been arming and equipping with transr port not only the great foiree that necessarily we must keep here to defend- our land, but we have sent out to West Africa, to Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, India, Burma, Malaya—all out of this nation here — not only hundreds of thousands of men, but ship after ship armed fully with stores, with guns, with munitions." When one realised, he added, that cue had to send about 7,000 vehicles with each division, and perhaps take them around the world, they saw something of the task the navy had to do. "It is simply amazing thai in thai enormous trek around the Avorld of British forces \vc should lirst of all luwe had the supplies to send from where Ave did, and, secondly, Ave should have got them there Avith such an infinitesimal loss as has been sustained. The Iloval Navy, he said, had been fighting Avith a strength in relation to the risks, and the forces to be faced quite inadequate on paper to the task. The Audacity He praised indiAidually the work of the men in the minesweepers, in submarines, in the Fleet Air Arm, and those who went round our coasts in small boats on nightlyi patrol. "I saw a German claim that they sank a great aircraft-carrier," he said. "They did sink an auxiliary called the Audacity, but before she went down she had brought doAvn three Focke-Wulfe long distance planes, and she had let! our surface vessels to three .separate submarines, all of Avhich Ave sank—that proA*es that these auxiliaries of our Fleet can be co-ordinated and used to the general advantage in modern Avarfare." The naval task to-day, sakt the First Lord, has been further Aviden-* eel byi the spread of the Avar to the Far East, and Ave are likely to l get— don't let's hide it from ourselves— many bumps, many losses., Avhile; the strength gathers at sea of our new Allies from the United l States, but in the end: that combined .strength will see us straight through to Arictorv.