Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1941. UNITY IN WAR TIME.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 March 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1941. UNITY IN WAR TIME.

APART from any other claims it may have io attent ion. the latest. Speech from the Throne derives special interest from being the first read by a new Governor-General whom the people of New Zealand have been proud and happy to welcome. , ir Cyril Newall has come to this country as the King’s representative with a reputation earned in the highest and most distinguished service in the Royal Air Force. It need not be doubled that in all sections of the community there will be a hearty response to Sir Cyril’s expressed hope that he may be able to assist in some measure in forwarding the prosperity and deI velopment of the Dominion.

Tn accordance with the standards usually observed in deliverances of the kind, both in time of peace and in time of war there are no very remarkable revelations in the speech placed on this occasion in the hands of his Excellency. On the subject of national political leadership in the war emergency, t he speech refers briefly to the War Cabinet and War Council, but leaves untouched the question of the formation of a National Government. It may nevertheless be hoped that this question will command and’ receive very serious attention in the session now Opened. Many of our politicians obviously perceive serious obstacles to the formation of a National Government, but a large proportion of the people ol the Dominion seem to be less and less inclined to tolerate even the subdued maintenance, in these grim days of conflict, of the political divisions that developed in easier times of peace.

As the Australian Prime Minister (Mr Menzies) has said, the struggle in which the Dominions are associated with Britain is°one in which there can be no question of limited liability.' Although the Commonwealth, like this country, still lacks a National Government, it appears to follow from the Federal Prime Minister’s observation that no British Dominion, in this time of continuing crisis, should be content with, anything less than completely united war leadership. The commanding facts of the situation leave room for no other conclusion. With its allies, the Empire is engaged in a fight for life. Our common interest, in winning that tight, completely dominates all other interests. It is surely only right and logical in these circumstances that all political differences should be set aside in favour of an undivided concentration on the prosecution of the war. The weight of opinion among thinking people undoubtedly is that political bickering and contention, of which we have had some flickering examples in recent times, is grossly objectionable and out, of place.

To say that completely united war leadership is desirable, and necessary, here and in other parts of the Empire, need not imply any disposition to engage in carping criticism of the Government’s direction of the national war effort. A. great deal of what has been done undoubtedly has been done well, but nothing less is demanded than that the organisation of the community for war should be rounded and complete in every detail. According to the Governor-General ’s Speech, the proper and adequate direction of the Dominion’s war effort has been materially assisted by the establishment of a 'War Cabinet and it is felt that by the establishment of a War Council, “every section of the community has been afforded some means of expressing its views and exercising its proper influence on the country’s war effort.” Tn the extent to which these claims are justified, it would appear that the ground has been prepared so completely for the establishment of’a National Government that there should be no difficulty in setting up that fully representative authority.

HEAVIER LOSSES AT SEA.

reports of continued achievements by British and allied forces on kind, at sea and in the air, there was set yesterday the news that shipping' losses in the week ended on March 2 amounted io just over 148.000 tons —the third highest losses suffered in any week since the war began. The figure includes twenty British ships, totalling 102,871 tons. This, no doubt, is the beginning of the intensified attack on shipping threatened recently by Hitler, but it is, of course, in results over a reasonably extended period and not in those ol a single week that the enemy effort will be tested. Since.the war began, British, Allied and neutral shipping losses from enemy action have totalled 4,800,000 tons —an awerage of about 61,000 tons a week. With two-thirds of these losses replaced by building, capture or acquisition, Britain and her allies are not yet menaced by any means as seriously as they were at the height of Germany’s U-boat campaign in the Great War. During the year 1917, British and Allied shipping losses from enemy action reached the huge total of 7,500,000 tons —more than half as much again as for the eighteen months of the present war. In its attacks on merchant shipping, Nazi Germany is making extended use of long-range aircraft as well as of submarines and mines and that these attacks as a whole are formidable is not in question. Britain, however, is using immensely powerful forces in the defence of her own shipping and that of Allied and neutral nations and if is reasonably certain that in their intensified campaign the Nazis will suffer increased losses of aircraft and submarines. It is recognised that weather conditions had a good deal to do with the reduction in British and Allied merchant shipping losses during the depth of the northern winter, when losses fell rapidly from a total of 101,190 tons in the week ended on December 8, 1940, to 14,687 tons in the week ended on January 5 last. With improving weather, losses were bound to increase, but it has yet to be seen how long enemy air and submarine raiding forces will be able to maintain their attack in face of the measures Britain is able to take for their extirpation.