Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1941. “OUR YEAR OF FATE.”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 May 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1941. “OUR YEAR OF FATE.”

POINTEDLY ns lie applied his observations to Australia and its war effort, the Federal Prime -Minister, Air Menzies, was dealing with demands made upon the whole British Empire when, in his first public address in his own country on his return from Britain and the United States, he described 1941 as “our year of fate.” With the northern summer opening, the position to be faced is that the British Umpire and its allies in some theatres, not least in the Mediterranean, are under the necessity of incurring heavy sacrifices with no better immediate prospect than that of checking the lorees 01. totalitarian aggression and preventing them from achieving any decisive result. ' No good or worthy purpose would be served by attempting to gloss over these hard realities. We are upheld by laith in Ihe justice of our cause in a fight lor lite and more than life, and also by a well-grounded belief that in maintaining a front unbroken in essentials during tin 1 summer ol this momentous • year we shall be able, with American ( help, Io develop a striking power which will ensure Ihe foulness ol Nazism eventually being swept away in utter defeat. The pTesenl course, oI the conflict against the totalitarian hordes and hope lor the Inture alike demand from us, however, the last, ounce ol effort ol ■which we are capable. This demand, it may lie supposed, has been impressed with final force on Nev; Zealand by the deeds and sacrifices ol the members of our fighting forces in Mediterranean theatres, Ihe more so since the losses suffered are in large part a direct and inevitable outcome of our own failure, in common with other Empire countries. Io prepare in good time lor the mammoth struggle in which we are now engaged. In Greece alone, hundreds of our soldiers have been killed or wounded and a much larger number, estimated in Ihe.tales! Ministerial statement on Ihe subject al 2,200, are posted missing. ()l these a great proportion no doubt arc prisoners of war. So long as the war continues, losses of gallant mon killed and wounded will be inevitable, but the loss of large numbers of our soldiers taken prisoner occurs only because they have been called upon to fight, as they were in (Ireece, against impossible and overwhelming odds, and in conditions in which their valour became, to an extent, of no avail. This is the bitterest, part of the price that has to be paid for failure to prepare in time to cope with the onslaught of an entirely ruthless ami unscrupulous enemy. With the forlorn hope battles in mainland (Ireece over arid done with, New Zealand troops —in what numbers we have not been told—together with their Imperial and Greek comrades, are now engaged in Urete in a conflict, as grim and deadly as has ever been known? in the history of warfare. The outcome has yet to bo determined, but it stands out quite (dearly that had the war preparations of the Empire been more advanced. Ihe conditions in which the battle for Crete is being fought . would have been transformed vastly to our advantage and to the disadvantage of the enemy. Il would be much worse than useless to waste time in repining over our past failures and neglect, the results of which must now be borne, and are being borne heroically, by our fighting forces. Most certainly, however, it is incumbent on us to make up for that failure and neglect by every means and effort of which we are capable. In his speech in Sydney, Air Menzies warned the people of the Commonwealth that in the next six months American help could not be decisive in the Mediterranean. America, lie said, had a long way to go before her war wheels would fully revolve and in the battle of 1941, Britons must depend on their own strength and their own resources and draw upon their own courage and resolution. For Australia he said that: — Spending on non-essentials must cease and every available penny be devoted to the building of armed vehicles, anti-tank guns, artillery, and other weapons which would make not merely a heroic but a victorious army. This is a programme which in essentials should appeal as strongly to New Zealanders as to Australians. We cannot hope to go by any means as far as Australia in her remark-able elaboration and development of war industry, hut we can, if we will, so order and if need be regiment, our social and industrial life as to ensure a maximum war effort. One of our Cabinet Ministers, Air Semple, is nt present in Australia on a mission connected with war supplies. Our national aim should be to co-ordinate our activities and efforts with those of Australia in whatever ways will best strengthen and advance the war organisation of the Empire and its allies. No effort that we can make, in the economic field as well 1 , as in direct military preparation, will bo more than enough to meet the grim demands of this fateful year and of the lime to follow. THE NAVY STRIKES BACK. JN the pursuit and sinking of the German battleship Bismarck, the Royal Navy has replied in most telling fashion to the measure of success gained by the enemy when one of his shells found the magazine of the battle-cruiser flood. The power of the Navy and the spirit by which if is animated have never been demonstrated more impressively Ilian in the unrelenting pursuit in which Germany’s newest and most powerful battleship was made a hopeless fugitive, seeking in vain some way of escape. 'Magnificent staff work- as well as splendid standards of efficiency in 1 he ships and aircraft of the Navy must have gone to Ihe weaving am] (dosing of Ihe net. in which Ihe Bismarck met her doom. An ironic touch is given to what Air Churchill lias called an episode of an arresting character in Ihe nows that the Ark Royal, the British aircraft-carrier which lying enemy reports have time and again declared Io have been destroyed, look an important .part in the pursuit of 1 lie Bismarck. Simultaneously with the news of the Navy’s great achievement in ihe North Atlantic, it is announced'that two British cruisers and four destroyers wore lost in the actions in which German sea convoys attempting to reach Crete from the Greek mainland were smashed and scattered. Happily it is hoped that a large proportion of the officers and men of the lost warships were saved. There coid.d have been no hope of escaping naval losses in Ihe narrow walers north of Crete against virtually unlimited forces of enemy dive-bombers and it must definitely bo a question whether action in similar conditions can be emit inned.