THE LONG VIEW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 July 1941, Page 6

THE LONG VIEW

IMPORTANCE OF SEA POWER. In thte war it is perhaps the most dangerous of all errors to talk too glibly of time being on our side, says the “Manchester Guardian.” Time is the ally only of those who use it to the best advantage, and in any event in a struggle of this scale avoidable delay can but add to the daily damage to the structure of civilised life and so to the later burden of reconstruction. But the long view is not the idle view but rather the perspective that should steel us for the constant daily effort; and the long view on this war has never been put more shrewdly and strongly than in a recent broadcast by the veteran soldier and statesman General Smuts. He sees it steadily and sees it whole. Sea-power will decide. And sea-power, as General Smuts surveys the situation, sooner or later means America, and may even mean American action in the Far East as well as in the Western ocean. The decision will be helped by the inevitable unfolding of what the triumph of Hitlerism would mean to the world: “Britain is investing in friendships as Germany is investing in hatreds.”