SEA SUPREMACY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 303, 17 May 1911, Page 3

SEA SUPREMACY.

I KXGLAXD DOES NOT POSSESS IT. J A GERMAN VIEW. It will be remembered that the chief naval adviser of the British Government, Sir A. K. Wilson, issued a report declaring Great Britain to be "practically safe from Invasion." England has a two-fold line of sea defence. But the military correspondent of the Times publishes in the form of a paper from Colonel Von Donner und Bitzen, the German reply to Aumiral Wilson's reading of the situation. The paper is amusing, yet it has an uncomfortable strength of logic about it:— It is strange that none of your seamen appreciates the difference! between the initiative and the want of it, and this notwithstanding Port Arthur. . . If the initiative is ours, what then? Navies within easy striking distance of the shores of an enemy are peculiarly vulnerable to surprise attacks, and the balance of naval power may be altered in a night. It is nine chances to ten that we shall have the initiative in a war with you. Your pampered pollarchy is incapable of declaring war, and all that you are good for, after the event, is war-demagogism a la Caius FJaminius. You dare not assume the initiative against us at sea. Why? Because any act of aggression committed against us automatically produces the casus foederis between us and our allies. You have no allies in Europe, and the initiative taken at your expense compels nobody else to march. This is your weakness, which wc shall certainly exploit. I am sorry to destroy another of your most cherished superstitions, but, to speak frankly, we deny to your navy the "seti Supremacy" which it claims. To whom belongs supremacy in the Pacific? To Japan. In the Western Atlantic? To the United States. ).n the Eastern Mediterranean?' To our good allies, Austria and Italy three years hence; and, though your old friend, Italy will fight you with regret and remorse. She cannot help herself with the alternative before her, of CO,OOO Tedeschi on the Mincio within' a month. It is true that your vicarJapan maintains for the moment your, position in the Pacific. But you hope to sign a general arbitration treaty with the United States, and your position will then be that you will be bound to fight any enemy of Japan, and so conceivably the United States; and, on the other hand, you will be bound not to fight the United States at all. With one or other of these Powers, therefore, your treaty must go,'for it will be based upon an equivocation. Moreover, in no distant sea can your navy now intervene effectively without uncovering your home territory. You dare not uncover your islands, because your people'are not train- / ed to arms. They are taught to take | from the State all that they can get and I to give it nothing. Consequently your navy is a home coastguard, and nothing more. You are good souls, you English, but you must keep the story of your sea supremacy for your marines.

What amuses us vastly i 9 the double face which you display to your colonies —I beg their pardon, lucus a non lucendo —to your "Dominions." On the one hand yoii tell them that your navy covers them as with a shield, and on the other you anplaud when some of them introduce compulsory training. The fact, is that your navy does not cover them because it is detained at home.

Mr. Haldane's policy, and the territorial force itself, can both be defeated on the grounds consecrated by Clausewitz, that a plan is good when no better can be proposed; and this is true of the territorial force, in the present, chaos of your politics and in the present stage of your military redemption. But if you ask me whether the numbers of your territorials enable you to carry out the military policy of 1909, my reply is very decidedly in the negative. Voluntary service is the 9ecret of comfort. But national service is the secret of victory. You are free aeents, and you can have victory or comfort, which you please. Comfort, as it seems, is your choice. As a result, not only your navy, but a large part of your regulars as well, will be divided from their legitimate missions in war. I therefore conclude that you have neither the navy of your strategy nor the army of your policy, and if you ask me whether I, as a German, am satisfied with this situation, my reply is in the. affirmative.

This, my dear friend, is our century, not yours. You English steadily avert your faces from the facts of the present day. 'You live in a world which has no real existence. You see what you wish to see and nothing more. Furbish up, if you please, that champion belt which has so long reposed in John Bull's strong-box, for the hour is at uand when we shall challenge for it.