SEA POWER.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 April 1924, Page 4

SEA POWER.

IHE GENESIS OF THE NAVY

(By F. J. Bali, 8.A., B.Sc.)

Few words appear so easy to define as sea power, yet few arc so difficult, and no people need to understand tfio term in every .shade of its meaning more than we, for by sea power we came into being; by it we bnvo been nourished and preserved, by it we hold Australia white, by it we live, by the loss of it we die. To fully un-

derstand what sea power is we must giV.e as far down the path of history as the dav of Tutankhamen. SO AIE ‘ OLD-TIME JUTLAX OS.

The first great naval battle that liislorv records was fought out bv one of the successors of Tutankhamen at the very place where three thousand years later Nelson destroyed Napoleon’s fleet —at the mouth of the Nile; the Egyptians won a great victory, which was followed by the slaughter which the recent discoveries in Egypt would lend us to expect. Even the notorious b'ennacherih of School Reader lame, had in his day ail invincible navy, which anticipated by long centuries such supposedly modern naval inventions as the ram, double decks, and armoured sides. These historical facts just serve to show I hat sea power was a greai factor in life long before tlie thousand triremes crashed in the terrible dentil struggle at Salamis, when tiie vaunted Persian navy was utterly routed, and long before ilie ancient mil ies of Ihe I’hoenieians cleared the wide reaches of tlie Alediterranonn. to be themselves at long last destroyed in tln.se great Carthaginian naval wars beloved bv our O.P.S. boys. And if the North Sea could give up her

dead of what Juflands and Trafalgars we should hear fought out ill great galleys, gunwale to gunwale, oars interlocked, and with the berserker fury of the l ikings even before the Xutnukhant ens were sweeping clean ihe warmer southern seas. But probably the first statesman to realise flint national safely is unsecured while another nation fields sea sovereignty was stern old Cato, who Fought tirelessly and pitilessly on until Carthage was finally powerless to put to sea another fleet. THE BIRTH Or A NAVY. To see the first beginnings of British sea power we must pass over a period of a thousand years and do nminenl iry homage to the great pioneer of our naval supremacy. King Alfred the Great (89(1 A.D.i It is a strange

I’aot that in those days so dark, (so cruel, and lawless by land, there were international laws governing the seas.

and slmrllv afterwards even marine insurance became a regular and safe business. Henry VILI also deserves a place in our naval annals, for if lie was unfortunately a man of ninny wives, he was also fortunately a man of many ships, and we can thank him lor our dockyards at ’Woolwich and Deptlord. Hut it was in the spacious days uf Queen Elizabeth that men began to realise at length that the destinies uf nations would he settled on sea and pivot around sea power. This knowledge was arrived at hv I hose evolutionary processes common to all liie. ’I lie introduction of sail-propul-sion was the death kneii of tlff* slow, restricted, unseaworthy, and vulnerable galley. Thanks then to Italy’s gilt of the compass and England’s of the chronometer, sailors could strike out into the trackless deep, make long voyages, and weather the fiercest gales. Then just when the

tune was ripe came gunpowder and carmen, and the old “rough-up’’ of battle, blood, and butchery in the galleys gave place to the gentlemanly acts oc war, skill, strategy, and seamanship. Still when one thinks of their crazy craft, tile unknown forces with whir]i they had to contend, the imeliarLetl seas, the elementary nature of I heir instruments, and their entire ignorance of hygiene, medicine, or surgery, one must admit that foi sheer daring and endurance and skill there is probably nothing more wonderful in the annals of human exploits than the voyages of 'Columbus, of tile Elizabethan captains, or of our own incomparable Captain Cook. BRITISH AND FRENCH NAVAL POLICY. -Since those days the great menace to our naval supremacy has been

France, but she has always suffered under a heavy handicap during all the centuries because, while England could concentrate almost uiidistraetedly on sea supremacy, France was compelled to envisage first and always a land policy, for she was contiguous in border with most of the great mili--1 tary peoples of Europe. Her policy has all along therefore been somewhat of a compromise, and therefore in the hour of crisis fatal, whereas England, by its God-given insularity, was compelled to turn its attention first and last to a maritime policy, which it did with an undeviating steadiness of purpose and an unwavering constancy in evil and good which Is not only one of the most admirable ieattires in our naval record, Imt also a marked contrast to the timid radiations and wild spasms of the French Admiralty. Franco equally with England had' raw material in plenty, staunch ships, and brave seamen to man them; she was also populous, patriotic, and wealthy. Yet the initial advantage always lay with England for sea power, while an object ol desire to France, was the very breath of England’s body. Barring, then,

sill'll an unfoi'seen eventuality as the rise of a maritime Napoleon—which to our good fortune never occurred, rather the reverse —the result of the titanic ronturies-long struggle for naval supremacy was almost inevitable. In addition, the fates were unkind to France, lor, having swept the navies of Spain and Holland off the sea, we were given in our hour ol surest need both a Nelson and a Rodney, and in a series of great battles French tier Is were destroyed in such wholesale fashion that she has never had the heart to tackle seriously the building of a great navy since. And when the curtain fell at last in ISI4 on a world at peace, it found the British Navy practically unchallenged on all the Seven Seas, France’s once proud Empire, including Canada, finally in our hands, her maritime trade a hopeless ruin, and the potential stranglehold of our navy at her throat so menacing that for a century it was her nightmare. It is a thrilling thought that if a small tongue of land had broken the English Channel in two, and connected England to tlie Continent, the whole history of the world would have been different, and Napoleon would have had his capital ift London. It is a sinister thought that England’s insularity is no more; the ecnquosL of the air has made her lor weal or woe a Continental Power, and those v ho say “Let. England leave the Continent to stew in its own juice, and develop her dominions,” might remember she could not if she would, for the dominating factor in her immediate policy is neither Labour Clovcrnmcut, nor unemployment,

nor peopling the dominions; none oi these : it is a machine housed in the aerodromes of France. The whirligig of time lias brought few revenges so strange niu! complete as this, and how Napoleon and his generals, if they could return, would gloat over the blotting old of that hated channel with the same exuberaiiL energy they (.nee displayed when they stood and solemnly cursed its dividing waters with bell, book, and candle.

SOME FA( TORS IN SEA-PO\VEU. While lie have not yet reached a i'ldl understanding of wluit Sea Power means and ail that the* lei in rummies, l ertnin facts are clear; one is. Englam!'-, iinancial supremacy was based (at Sea Pouer. By her control of tho trade routes she built up such a vast volume of commerce and credit that she became Europe's hanker; this iaci enabled her to follow out with extraordinary consistency and singleness of aim her traditional policy of •undermining and overturning any great Power that would be the Colossus of the Continent. If a war suited her honk she could finance it; if it were inimical to her interest or brought no prolit , with tins same financial <jor<l she could strangle it. Napoleon saw this with ail the clearness and intensity of a great statesman, and he stiaim'd every nerve and sinew to cut England's arteries, her maritime trade; lie threatened, bullied, and cajoled; as a forlorn hope he aluuclied Ids lanmus Decree; but although he controlled all Europe a Hritish fleet in I cing was iu-.i. a-, much to 1.0 dreaded as the invincible Napoleon himself. Mis words to Captain Maitland of Pm historic J'I.AES. Beileropkon are memorable- -"Mad it not been for yon English I should have been the Emperor oi the East as well, but ivhereei er there is water to Hunt a ship we are sure to lind vou in the v.ay.” An-

other fact of some interest to us i-. England's colonial empire was built on Sea Poe. or, and Fiaige’s was lost fur the lack of "it. By the wiping out of the two great French Heels ui It rest and Toulon, Franco east irrevocably a territory as rich and as ex pensive as Lite continent oi Australia. By a temporary naval aberration, when the French licet was allowed to pass unchallenged through the Straits of Gibraltar, wo mainly lost the United Stales, for that fleet- bore no small part in the defeat of Cornwallis at York town, so costly to England was oven a. temporary loss of the initiative on the seas. If anyone would ask, “What avails Sea Power ’’ let him answer, “What would have happened if Nelson Imd lost Trafalgar; Japan been bon ten at Tsushima; the Grand Fleet annihilated off Jutland?” And that is only one facet of a manysided question.