MEN TO MAKE PEACE.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 February 1919, Page 7

MEN TO MAKE PEACE.

"LET ADMIRALS AND GENERALS ACT." Admiral Sir JR. E. Wemyss, First Sea Lord, speaking at the Royal Scottish Corporation lunch in London recently, in celebration of St. Andrew's Day, said the war would not have been won—in fact, it could not have been conducted—had it not been for the Navy. The co-ordination of the forces in the North Sea had made possible the campaigns in Mesopotamia, Salonika, Palestine and France. It was the power exercised by the Grand Fleet which made it possible for troops to come from overseas and from America. "If the Grand Fleet had not had a chance of that extra pyrotechnic display so many people expected, at least," he concluded, "we have reduced the German Fleet to a position from which, I venture to think, it never can emergeWe might have had a Trafalgar in the North Sea. and after that Trafalgar the German Fleet might possibly have emerged. After the extraordinary doings of the last three weeks, however, can . anyone imagine that the German F!«it will, for generations, ever be a nowr again? T have hardly known how tn look at this extraordinary turn of events, but the more one looks at it the mr.re one realises that the victory—bloodless though it is—is greater than any ever won by any naval force.

"We must Tie prepared to face many difficulties, two of which wouM concern us more than any other—the freedom of the seas and the League of sTaticTH. be it from me to deprecate a League of Nations, but I have seen too much of the war not to realise there will be most strenuous difficulties in peace. Were the Peace Conference condncted only hy admirals and generals, peace for all time would be assured. The question was whether the human race wat prepared to give up sovereignty and eelf-eovemment and to T*nl in the hands of an international Vidv its rights. If that time had arrived we might be assured of a perpetual peace. We could not get it and there would come a time, before the League of Nations was established as such, when we should have many probkms to deal with. The best "imrantee mankind has been enabled to devise for the peace of the world is the security brought about by the freedom and power of the British Navy. That power, which has never been a/bused in peace, has never been dishonored in war."