A MAGNIFICENT RECORD

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 280, 25 August 1942, Page 4

A MAGNIFICENT RECORD

The high compliments paid to the Merchant Navy at the annual dinner of the New Zealand Company of Master Mariners contained no word or phrase of over-statement. Circumstances are such in this war that an enormous task—as perilous as it is vital to our cause-— has been placed in the hands of merchant shipping. It is an emprise far and and away greater, more complex and more dangerous than was the case from 1914 to 1918, but it is one which proceeds, day by day, with only occasional public recognition of the. devotion and sacrifice entailed. Now and again some story of heroism or suffering, achievement or endurance is told to the people, but for the most part the record must be compiled in secret. In. his speech at the dinner Commodore Lake remarked that the full history of the Merchant Navy’s war effort, when it can be written, will astound the world. Free peoples will await this more adequate revelation with eagerness and pride; in the meantime it is the least of their duties to ensure that the officers and men of the merchant marine are assisted and heartened in- their comings and goings in hard-worked ships by every means of co-operation, self-denial and hospitality. If there is one country where the people should know what is owed to the Merchant Navy it is New Zealand. No unit of the selfgoverning sections of the Empire is more dependent on sea-borne tiade for its economic stability than this Dominion, and the sea-lanes that connect us with the Mother Country are the longest of all. But despite that fact, and the dangers to be countered, the Merchant Navy has maintained the sea-borne trade of this country at record levels. In the production year which ended on June 30, the value of the shipments sent from New Zealand exceeded £74,000,000, and. the imports exceeded £51,000,000. And that is only a part a relatively small part—of the freight carried by the merchant, ships. They continue to pour foodstuffs and materials into British ports, in such quantities that only last week the British Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, .was able to give an assurance that, although there would be need for care, there was no-serious prospect of a food shortage. That is the position at the close of three years of war, and it is in large measure due to the ability of the Merchant Navy, under the piotection of the British Navy, to maintain the services.