“Amphibious Albion.”

Sea Supremacy’s results

POSSIBLY shallow-draught warships are destined to play an important part in operations of the near future.

As to this there is no information available and if there were it could not be published, but one of the uses to which monitors can be applied was illustrated in the story issued by the Admiralty last night.

The destruction of the Konigsberg “in a jungle” some distance up the Rufigi River (German East Africa) reads like a chapter from an old “Boys’ Own Paper” tale, and there is a strong temptation to dwell on its romantic features.

At the Admiralty it is the practical side which counts, but imagination and initiative are related, and  "Amphibious Albion” may have further surprises in store for Tirpitz.

The romantic element was very pronounced in the undertaking so successfully carried through by airplanes and “flat bottoms” on the heart of an East African swamp.

Much more daring may be the achievements yet to be placed on record.

What Britain’s command of the seas has meant and means is constantly receiving exemplification.

Botha’s triumph was not unconnected with it, and there is good reason to believe that to it Russian’s “recovery” may largely be attributed.

British submarines in the Baltic, British transports at Archangel - all tell the same story.

And when the full history of Britain’s great munitions hustle is available we shall understand much better the supreme part played in the war by those ships of which we hear so little.

Incidentally, by the same token, we shall learn what little cause there has been for the denunciations of the persons and departments.

Our need was great, greater than the greatest authority ever anticipated, vastly greater than any of the self constituted critics ever dreamed.

But “our” need, being interpreted, was and is the need of the whole of the Allied Fighting Forces and it has been and is Britain’s part to provide a large share of the supplies of ammunition and material.

As Lord Murray of Elibank says in a letter to the Journal des Debats “the British people are trying to accomplish things which most people would have pronounced impossible a year ago.”

When, he adds, the history of the last 10 months comes to be written he does not think the British will be found to have been “either lethargic or apathetic, and at least of all at the present moment.”

He puts the thing very nicely and politely when he observes that “Englishmen are applying methods of controversy and criticism which are habitual to them” but reiterated that “over all this apparent confusion the Government is directing the preparation of a huge national effort.”

We see these “methods of controversy” in Mr. Austen Harrison’s allegation that the Allied Forces in Gallipoli Peninsula are practically marooned that German submarines (so he suggests) are frightening away our warships, and that we may have to give up this undertaking.

Yet we know that this is nonsense, that (for example) the wounded are constantly and safely conveyed to Valetta and that reinforcements are constantly reaching the Aegean Sea.