THE PENDING NAVAL CLASH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 10, 30 September 1942, Page 4

THE PENDING NAVAL CLASH

/WHEN such a well known correspondent as Mr Martin Agronsky of the New York Daily Mirror who has just returned, to America after a long period with tlie American forces in Australia, announces that in his opinion the ordei of Japanese conquests in the Pacific will be Port Moresby, New Caledonia, and then New Zealand, a note of warningis struck which it would be folly to ignore. Little by little we have been led along the corridors of apprehension and alarm, until we are now apparently quite capable of complacently reviewing even this disconcerting piece of news. "Too long" said one noted visitor to these shores recently, ''too long have you New Zealand,ers enjoyed the security of your splendid isolation. Now, even with the enemy almost at your very gates you are still fogged by the unbroken peace of past years and the oft-repeated thought it cannot happen here."' These words from one who has been a visitor to the war zones of Europe and China are a frank and scathing observation from one who sought not to criticise but only to help. How t many New Zealanders realise that only the American navy stands between them and the avowedi conquests of Imperial Nippon ? How many again realise just what the concentrated might of the Japanese navy means; and how many appreciate to the full the debt which we of the Antipodes owe to Uncle Sam's greyhounds of the: deep. .Listen, it must be patent to anybody with normal powers of deduction that the fate of this Dominion rests entirely upon the power of the American fleet to once again meet and defeat the navy of the Rising Sun. The steel ships of the stars and stripes constitute New Zealand's protective screen to-day and it must ever be remembered that upon this battlement in the forthcoming sea struggle rests our own fate regarding continued pcacc or invasion. There is one thing however which must be borne in mind when considering a Japanese, offensive, either on land or on the sea. Twice, the so-called invincible fleet of the Mikado has been heavily handled by the American naval forces. If Japan is to run true to type she will never give up the attempt unless physically incapable of doing so. Her tactics of coming back, again and again have won success by their own dogged persistance: and disregard for loss. The initial defeats in the South Pacific can therefore be read, merely as an invitation for a greater and still more far-reaching attempt at conquest. Only the next time she comes, she will . be stronger, more careful and in greater force. It is safe therefore to prophesy that the lull in the South Pacific will be broken by a major sea battle upon the outcome of which will depend the course of the war as far as we in New Zealand are concerned.