THE Pukekohe & Waiuku Times PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS. TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1916 WHAT WE OWE THE NAVY.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 192, 18 July 1916, Page 2

THE Pukekohe & Waiuku Times

PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY AND FRIDAY AFTERNOONS.

TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1916 WHAT WE OWE THE NAVY.

The Official Organ ot . The Franklin County Council. The Pukekohe Borough Council. The Tuakau Town Board. The Karaka Eoad Board. The Pokeno Eoad Board. The Wairoa Eoad Board. The Papakura Town Board. The Waikato Eiver Board. The Mr-rcer Town Board. The Manurewa Town Board -

" We nothing extenuate, nor let down aught in malice."

W hex | ;i thousand ycara ago Alfred the Great built the lirst English Navy to meet and defeat the would-be invaders of our soil before they could set foot upon it, lie, with an instinct almost amounting to inspiration, made a practical application of the principle that has come down to us unaltered through ten centuries of sea-power never successfully challenged. And when on the morning of the first of last month Germany woke up practically without a navy- that is to say with her ileet so shatterol and so deprived of necessary uuits that it could not put to soa—without, in fact, "a lleet in being,"—she was forced to assimilate, slowly and painfully no doubt, but once ami for ever, the unpleasant fact that Britain's sea-power, always supreme,

had become an unconquerable absolutism. When the Hebrew poet wished to describe the illimitable omnipotence ; of Jehovah he pictured him as i holding the seas in the hollow of his j hand. We may, without the slight- j est feeling of irreverence, claim that j that is exactly what England is ! doing to-day. Like a colossus her j Navy bestrides the narrow world, | and no enemy ship can lloat on the sea, nor any neutral vessel enter an enemy port. And tho jubilant German claim that the blockade is broken because a single submarine has groped its way in darkness across tho Atlantic is as futile as it would be to say that law does not prevail in England because a single sneak-thief escapes tho vigilance of tho police. However much wo may admire tho brilliant exploits of our soldiers ; however greatly we may applaud the dogged courage of our Russian friends and the gallant resourcefulness and (" lan of our French comrades, wo cannot refuse to admit that the war has been won for us and our allies by the Navy. We say has been won, because, though no doubt much bloody fighting yet remains to be done, Germany's last hope of victory vanished when the battle of the Skager Rack destroyed her remaining chance of breaking the blockade Crawl she ever so venomously beneath the sea, hover she ever so truculently in the air above, she can do nothing to loosen the deadly grip that is remorselessly choking out her life-breath. And to the spirit of our sailor-men, handed down to us from Alfred's time, we owe it all. To the tradition so long fostered that it has become a second nature that no enemy foot must be allowed to tread English soil civilization owes it that it does not lie to-day prostrate and bleeding beneath the foot of a Hunnish victor. When we see names like Arbuthnot and Hood among the fallen we may thank Heaven that we have still among us the old sea-faring families that have for generations given the best of their sons to the service of their country upon blue-water. Our sailors have asked for nothing better than to be given the chance to risk their Hues to preserve the shores of the Empire inviolate At the beginning of the war we printed a little poem in which the generous ungrudging spirit of devotion which animates our Navy is finely caught. Tho Battleship is supposed to bo speaking—

" Hear my prayer, oh God of

Battles, That my day may come at length ; That my enemy may meet mo Iu his insolent o and strength :

I iiave waited, waited, Father, With ono single hope imbued ;

Let mo .strike one blow—one only, For my Mistress and her Brood."

" My Mistress and her Brood." Think of all it means to us—most of all to us who are of the Brood. Are we to forget the mon who have preserved to us not merely life but all that makes life endurable i Shall wo so far fail in our duty as not to make it sure beyond all chance of error that no widow or child of a sailor who has givon his lifo for tho Empire shall suffer want or piivation '{ Money is but a poor recompense for tho sacrifices so nobly made, but as it is all we have to oiler let us oiler it unstintingly, aud not allow ourselves to be misled by the offensive use of the word " charity," so freely bandied about in connection with the payment of our most sacred debt.