THE SILENT FLEET.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 115, 8 October 1914, Page 3

THE SILENT FLEET.

DRAMA OF THE NORTH SEA. BRITAIN'S FIGHTING SHIPS. SUPREMACY UNCHALLENGED. "The navy of Britain, working silently, but intensely, commands the sea." Thus wrote tho special correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald from London on August 22. In his letter,'he said: A day or two ago we had a momentous word from the War Office Press Bureau: "There is a certain livliness in the North Sea," it is said. A certain livlincss—truly a goodly word. They intended it to tell us that the great fleet keeping watch up there had stirred into activity. Something was afoot. These dramatically silent days and nights of waiting had been disturbed. The German advance by land had just become a tangibly-moving vaatness. Perhaps the German inaction by sea was also to end. [Perhaps the bottled-up German Navy, 'so long and so often claimed rs Germany's sufficient answer to our ships, had at least been spurred to hazard the open sea and the waiting foe. .It may be so, but for the present we remain merely expectant. That word of a certain livliness merely lifted the curtain for a moment. It ha-> dropped again, Tho great drama of the North Sea still plays itself out in silence and secrecy.

What the German ships hope to accomplish by lying at anchor behind their fortresses we do not know. It has always been presumed that the German Navy exists, and has been developed for the protection of German commerce, yet day by day Germany's subservience to Britain's command of* tho sea is more splendidly obvious. Our North Sea fleet waits in vain for the enemy's answer to its challenge. Our cruisers patrol the great sea pathways, our merchant ships go even more freely, while scores of Gelman commerce carriers are interned. Not only so, but another great function of the German warships has wholly miscarried. They were to see to it that no British Army crossed tho Channel. They have not seen to it. They lay inside their harbors all last week with the British fleet daring them to issue forth, and as they lay there thousands upon thousands of British troops, in transport a-fter transport, entered France. Thus is it with the passage of our ships of peaGe; they go unchecked in the very face of the German Navy. They go unchecked by virtue of the British. The navy of Britain, working silently, but intently, commands the sea. We in Louden, at close quarters with it and its great achievement of these few days past, are tremendously impressed by this passive strength of tho British Navy. We hope soon to see it at the full and glorious hoight of its fighting power. The third week of the war is closing for us. It is an hour of tense expectation. We are on the verge of tremendous events. The fleet is still silent, and still invisible. 'We are confident tbat when it docs speak, its voice will shake the world.