The Victory of the Atlantic
The most significant passage in the Prime Minister's speech at the opening of Parliament, on Wednesday, dealt with the course of the war at sea. It cannot be a war of naval battles, for one thing that is beyond the power of the Royal Navy is to bring the German or Italian fleets to action. But the diminished scale of the sinkings of British merchant-ships in the Atlantic, and the increased scale of the sinkings of enemy supply-ships and trans- ports in the Mediterranean is calculated to inspire well-grounded confidence. One or two sets of figures tell the whole story. In the four months to the end of June this year we lost over 2,0oo,000 tons; in the four months to the end of October we lost under 750,000 tons. In the four months to the end of October we sank or seriously damaged in the Mediterranean alone nearly t,000,000 tons of enemy shipping—and all the time our Coastal Command and other aircraft have been sinking German ships daily off the French and Dutch and Norwegian coasts. This, coupled with the new construction to which Mr. Churchill made reference, will, by 1943 or earlier, " enable overseas operations to take place which are utterly beyond British resources at the present time." And it may enable operations in Libya to take place very much sooner than 1943. Altogether we may begin to talk not of the Battle but of the Victory of the Atlantic.
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