PROPHECY RECALLED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1942, Page 4

PROPHECY RECALLED

LORD JELLICOE’S REPORT ON PACIFIC ANTICIPATION OF JAPANESE METHODS. ADDRESS BY COMMODORE . GODDARD. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Addressing the annual meeting of the Wellington branch of the Navy League, Commodore R. V. Goddard, Chief of the Air Staff, stated that the late Lore! Jellicoe foresaw the Japanese war and even the method with which she would begin, prophesying an attack such as was delivered on Pearl Harbour. Japan entered the present war when the greater part of the British Fleet was occupied in other waters it could not leave, and when the British forces in this area were not large. Lord Jellicoe foresaw circumstances of that kind when he pointed out, in a report, that the Japanese were not our allies in the last war for purely sentimental reasons. An examination of their motives in the last war, Lord Jellicoe said, would show that those motives would not hold good in any future war, and it should therefore be assumed that the Japanese would not be on Britain's side in any future war. Lord Jellicoe had recalled that the success of the Japanese against the Russians in the Yellow Sea battle of 1904 was brought about by surprise action, before wai’ was declared. From that he thought it certain that in any future war the Japanese would launch a most powerful attack upon the most important naval base in the Pacific before war had begun. That was what occurred at Pearl Harbour, said Commodore Goddard.