BRITAIN’S POWER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1746, 9 August 1917, Page 4

BRITAIN’S POWER.

THE KEYSTONE OF THE ALLIANCE. EVERYTHING RESTS ON THE NAVY. Au article by Mr Sydney Brooks, in the National Geographic Magazine, provided for American readers an admirable summary of Britain’s share of the Allied task in the war, combined with a striking impression of the regeneration of the British nation and the great changes which have accompanied its war effort. One of the most graphic sections of the article dealt with the work and influence of the British Navy upon the struggle. I like to think, wrote Mr Brooks, of some future Mahan using’the history of this war to point the deadly realities of seapower. He will need no other example. Everything that naval supremacy means or can ever mean has been taught in a fashion that he who runs may read. Suppose Great Britain had remained neutral and the British Navy had never moved. What would have happened? The German and Austrian dreadnoughts, with a live'-to-one preponderance over the combined dreadnought strength of France and Russia, Would have held an easy command over the sea. Germany could then have supplemented her land attack by disembarking troops on both the Russian and French coasts in the rear of the Russian and French armies; she would have shut off all (he French overcas trade; she would have captured or driven into port practically the whole of the French and Russian merchant marine; France would have been blockaded; with her chief industrial provinces in German occupation, she would have been prevented from importing any food, any raw material, any munitions; while Germany would have been free to draw on the resources of the entire world. In less than six months, for all her magnili ■ cent valour, France could not hut have surrendered. Thai was the F.assian calculation, and it was a perfectly sound otic; hut it fell like a house of cards when Britain intervened. Instead of securing at once the command of the sot), Germany lost it at once. Everything that she had hoped to indict upon France and Russia by maritime supremacy was in fact indicted upon. herself. What has made it possible for us to land some 2,000,000 men on the Continent of Europe, equipped with every single Item in the infinitely varied paraphernalia of modern war?. How have we been able to conduct simultaneous campaigns in Egypt, East, Africa, tiie Gamaroons, South-West. Africa, the Balkans, and the Pacific There are Russian troops lighting at this moment in France and around Salonika. How did they get there? From all the ends of the earth British subjects in hundreds upon hundreds of thousands have docked to the central battlefield. What power protected them? • The United States Ims built up with the Allies a trade that throws all previous American experience of foreign commerce into the shade. Bid how many Americans, 1 wonder, slop to,ask themselves how it is that this vast volume of merchandise lias crossed the Atlantic in the midst of the greatest war in all history almost as swiftly and securely as in the-days of profonndesl peace? One by one Germany's colonies have been torn from her grasp — those oversea possessions, the cliildren of so many hopes, the seenes of such unremitting labour, (he nursing plots of such vast ambitions; and not a single blow has been struck in defence of them by the Fatherland itself. One and all have had to rely on (heir own isolated and local efforts. They have looked in vain to Germany. Germany—paralysed by what power? held down in helplessness by what mysterious spell? has impotently walchcd her beginnings of a world empire shattered beneath her eyes. How is it, again, that the Belgian army has been re-armed, reconstituted, and re-equipped? How is it that the Servian forces have similarly been rescued mid remade? How is it that Russia has been remunitioned, that Italy has boon enabled to overcome her national deficiencies, that France, in spite of the loss of some of her most highly industrialised districts, is still, for purposes of war and of commerce, a great manufacturing nation, and that (lie Allies can import freely what they need from the neutral world? To what übiquitous and unshakable power, stretching from Iceland to (lie Equator and hack again, guarding all the oceans, girdling the whole world, are these miracles due? They are due tto just one thing—the British Navy. ’ Because of the British Navy, Germany is a beleaguered garrison, her strength steadily, ceaslessly sapping away; her people languishing physically under the stress of the blockade, and financially and economically under the total loss of her foreign trade. Defeat the British Navy and the war is over in six weeks. There lies Germany’s nearest road, not only to peace, but to full and final victory. Take away from the Grand Alliance the support of the British Navy, and the whole structure collapses into nothingness. . . Our control of the oceans is not a mere adjunct to the strength of the Alliance. It is its basis. It supports the whole edifice. "Without it all that the Allies have built would crumble to pieces. With it' they can erect, as on a rock, the instruments of certain victory.