HER NAVAL IMPOTENCE

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2669, 14 January 1916, Page 6

HER NAVAL IMPOTENCE

iWHY GERMANY MUST TURN HER EYES to the east. Renter's Zurich correspondent states that in addressing the Austrian Geographical Society at Vienna, Dr. Gerfiard Schott, Director of the Hamburg Naval Observatory, was forced to make some humiliating confessions of German impotence in face of the British Navy. The whole' of Germany's sea traffic, ho : said, had to come out of the small triangle Ems—Heligoland—Syltj and 95 percent, went through the Straits of Dover, which were completely impassable when both shores were hostile. Even tlio 220-mile-broad Northern passago, from the North Sea had been successfully closed by the "Police Bureau" at Kirkwall, which brought in all neutral ships. And in the Mediterranean everything was subject to the rulers of Gibraltar, who. controlled the whole international tragic to India, Eastern Asia, East Africa, and Australia. Only at the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus did tho English power cease.

"This," Dr. Schott continued, "is our future. Here, even in times of war we shall have a way open to the Important oceans of the world. Its maintenance is a question of life for the-Central Powers. To gain this is tlie-more important, since in the Indian Ocean England : has only two obstacles in the way—the Persian Gulf and German East Africa. ; Otherwise the Indian Ocean may be regarded as purely British."