The Daily News. SATURDAY, MARCH 2. MINES IN NEW ZEALAND WATERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 March 1918, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, MARCH 2. MINES IN NEW ZEALAND WATERS.

Seven enemy mines have now been discovered and destroyed off Cape Farewell, Cook Strait, in an area which has been suspected for some timfi past by the naval authorities. An official statement Ijas recently been issued by the Naval Adviser to the New Zealand Government, pointing out that these mines were tf enemy manufacture, and that they had evidently been laid and anchored by a vessel fitted out for the purpose. How or when this outrage occurred it is impossible to conjecture, but there appears to be a suspicion that the German marauder Wolf may have included this enterprise among her many acts of daring piracy, but whether the view is correct or not, it is decidedly unpleasant to Jcnow that the coastal waters of New Zealand have been visited by enemy craft for nefarious purposes. Australia had a somewhat similar experience, and in both cases the infamdßs act is . shrouded in mystery. It is perfectly evident that this mine laying by the enemy lias taken place on an extensive scale, mines having been found in the neighborhood of Ceylon, outside Bombay, at the Cape, newAden, and not far from Colombo, and it is quite within - reason to assume that more than one enemy ship has been engaged on ihis work and escaped detection. The Australian minefield was tlic most distant from European waters recorded until the discovery of' the field on the New Zealand coast. Fortunately the enemy ship was anxious to avoid being seen at work, and she seems to have dropped her mines just clear of the regular trading route, though one may now surmise that the Port Kembla was sunk by one of the mines and not by an internal explosion. It is a new thrill for New Zealanders to have a peril of war so near home, for although from time to time circumstantial rumors of the activities of enemy raiders in Australasian waters have been iu circulation, they have been without basis, and this is the first occasion on which positive evidence has been forthcoming of the approach of an enemy ship to the New Zealand coast. It is not surprising that one enemy ship should have been able to visit New Zealand without being detected, because shipping is scarce in the wide expanses of the southern ocean, and for the most part it keeps pretty closely to the regular trade routes, or it would do so but for the war conditions. The raider would have to avoid the frequented routes as far as possible, and apparently in laying the minefield she kept clear of shipping, i otherwise the mines might have been placed in a position where they would have done more damage. The feeling of New Zealanders, in view of the official statement, will be one of thankfulness that so little material damage was done and that no lives were lost, and a tribute ought to be paid to the authorities for their watchfulness and their work in locating and clearing the minefield. The ingenuity of the Germans in all matters of stealth and frightfulness is well known, so that it is not surprising that their emissaries should have ventured to thees distant waters on a mission of dealing out destruction to ships and the precious lives on board. The vast expanse of the ocean highways favors this abominable campaign, just as the dark, misty nights enable enemy craft to make a meteoric dash from the safety of their mine-protected harbors, in order to bombard a coastal town in the Motherland. But there is no question •hat these mines in close proximity to the chief port of the Dominion have brought home more vividly the r, ality of the war. We have been extremely fortunate, so far, to have escaped from the terrors of submarining and mine fields, so common in the seas nearer the war "•Mitres, but the fact of even a single

visit from enemy waft indicates the necessity for increased vigilance 011 "land and sea, and a far stricter policy ol : interning enemy aliens. The raider, or minelayer, are both unpleasant facta that have to he faced. The British Navy lias long since recognised the danger of minelayers, for it has sulfercd by their operations. The return of the Wolf to Germany shows that the raiders can not only slip through the blockade outward bound oil destruction beiit, but can also with equal facility return home. One maj', however, safely guess that for every German raider that gets safely through many fail in the attempt. The submarine minelayer has created a new problem, because the enemy surface ship could be found and sunk, but the submarine can follow the minesweepers and lay a fresh Held as the old one is cleare 1. Of 22 British destroyers sunk in 1916 no fewer than 11 were lost through enemy mines. Actually, considering the work that is done by the destroyers and the risks they must run, the number lost is very small, but the proportion sunk by mines is impressively high. Larger ships, those of the fleet as well as merchantmen, move along less risky routes, except, of course, when the fleet trails its coat in the neighborhood of Heligoland, but (as a southern contemporary points out) even so a proportion of the ships that figure in the weekly returns of losses must certainly be numbered among those sunk by mines and not by torpedoes.