LORD JELLICOE’S VISIT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1946, 1 March 1919, Page 4

LORD JELLICOE’S VISIT.

It is announced that Lord Jellicoe has sailed on board the battlecruiser New Zealand on a visit to the Dominions. New Zealand will thus, in common with the other Dominions, have an opportunity ol showing its appreciation of the work of the navy in the war. Possibly, at a later date, says the Auckland Herald, wc may be. able to assess more accurately than we can now the parts played respectively by the allied armies and the allied navies in bringing Germany to submission. We know that Germany suffered military defeat, but we cannot precisely estimate how much naval pressure and naval action contributed to that defeat, either in lime or in magnitude. If it was the American army that turned the balance against the enemy, the British navy was largely instrumental in lauding that army in France. Without our navy it could not have landed. Another side of the navy’s effort, which is not so generally appreciated, is emphasised by two cablegrams published recently. Germany is reported, on the authority of British officers, to be seriously short of food; the British Government has vast stocks, prices are being reduced, and supplies have been sent to feed the Germans. This i> an epitome of the results of naval pressure. Germany drew upon Austria and Turkey; the area of what was the Central Empires is sufficient to feed all their peoples if the lands were fully cultivated. Britain is a small, thickly-populated island kingdom, which must have starved but for imports. The navy fed Britain and her allies, and all their armies, and brought the enemy to the point of starvation. What is true of food is true of military supplies. Germany could bring nothing across the sea; Britain could draw from all parts of (lie world. The British Empire’s military effort was magnificent. Less picturesque, but no less thorough, was the work of the navy. U strengthened every idly and it weakened the enemy from his front trench to his main base of supply.