The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, MAY 18, 1916. BRITAIN'S NAVY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 37, 18 May 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, MAY 18, 1916. BRITAIN'S NAVY.

What Britain’s Navy has meant for the world in this great war against the brutal and utterly! e\ il schemes of Prussian militarism may never be realised or recognised by the world at large. It is, however, quite plain to all that the British Navy is stronger to-day than it was when war broke out, and it is equally certain that Germany has no means of materially improving her naval position, of making good what she has lost through her relative naval weakness, or of wresting from the Allies the absolute naval superiority which they now enjoy. Admiral Mahan, of the United States Navy, in all his valuable works on naval matters, emphasised strongly the doctrine that sea power always has been and always must be, the decisive factor in all great international struggles, and the progress of affairs in the present struggle is evidence in favoui of the contention. The editor of the New York Tribune, Mr L. Simonds, w -ho at the outset of hostilities was generally credited with a sympathetic inclination towards Germany, has apparently made up bis mind by now that Germany, Austria, and Turkey, are doomed to overwhelming disaster. In January of the present year, Mr Simonds wrote: “Even at the present moment it is possible to say unqualifiedly that naval power has achieved all that was expected of it —more than many expected it could a< lucre. So far, it has supplied the jingle decisive element in the whole struggle. British sea power—and it is not necessary now to discuss the relatively minor part played by the Russian, the Italian, or even the French Navy won the war so far as the water was concerned in the first days of the conflict, and without battle.” The German High Sea Fleet, on wluch the Kaiser’s hope of world power realh . depended, lies besieged in harbour j “it can come out as could Cervera’s, fleet at Santiago, but only to face same fate.” Unless Gornmnv can find a way to break Brita n’s sei, power her cause is lost: there is no other conclusion.