Evening star., 1944-04-25
Admiral King Reports

A0mtrQl Ming NePOTtS
Admiral Kings report to the Sec
retary of the Navy tells the story of
a United States Fleet which has
fought its way back from the edge
of disaster to an assured command
of the seas in which our vital
interests lie.
Much of this recital has to do
with the physical growth of the
feet. After the beginning of the
war in Europe and the assumption
by this country of certain obliga-
tions in support of the opponents
of aggression, it quickly became
evident that our Navy lacked the
strength for the manifold duties
which devolved upon it. Britain
was gravely threatened and we faced
the possibility that the British fleet
would be lost, or that at least it
might lose it's home bases. To help
guard against this potential menace
to us we undertook the obligations
of lease-lend and limited convoy
functions which necessitated sub
fractions from our main fleet in the
Pacific at a time when the threat
from Japan was beginning to assume
alarming proportions.
That was when we began to pay
the penalty for the years of blind
neglect Of our armed services. For
all practical purposes we were at
war in the Atlantic, and war in the
grim reality of Pearl Harbor was
about to burst upon us in the Pacific.
Yet we were unready-on the sea,
on the land and in the air. A one
ocean Navy, which, as events were
to show, was not even strong enough
at the time to discharge its full
responsibilities in the Pacific, sud-
denly was called upon to spearhead
the fight in a two-ocean war.
1t was this state of affairs, need
less to say, which forced us into the
defensive posture that enabled the
japanese, to sweep through the
Central and Southern Pacific in a
triumphant and unprecedented ad-
vance. While they were winning an
empire we were hard pressed to
hold the most essential bases and
safeguard the most vital lines of
communication. That we were sue
cessful in this minimum effort is
tribute enough to the courage, skill
and self-sacrificing spirit Of the
officers and men of the fleet, for in
the early days of the war, in the
relative sense, they had little else
to fight with.
Now, as Admiral King points out,
all this has changed. We have gone
from the purely defensive to the
defensive-ofensive, and from there
to the offensive defensive and to
the beginning stages of full
hedged offensive. Today it is our
ships and our planes and our men
that have the initiative and the
power to drive the enemy across the
Pacific and back against his own
key defenses. The fleet, with all
OF its component parts, has emerged
from the darkness of Pearl Harbor.
and Is on the sure road to victory.
There is every reason to suppose.
however, that it still is a long road
and a hard one. We have overcome
In our own fleet the weakness that
was the price of our foolish policies
during the prewar years. But we
have not yet wrested from the enemy
the great advantages in position
and resources that he was able to
secure before we had the strength
to go out and stop his triumphal
march. This is going to cost US
heavily in American lives and effort
and money. Had we been willing
to pay but fraction of the impend-
Ing price in the years prior to the
war we might have prevented the
conflict altogether, and certainly
could have contained the Japanese
with relatively little difficulty. But
we were not willing, and now there
is no choice but to send our young
men out to die for the mistakes of
their elders. All of us must hope
that we will remember this and
profit by it when the day of victory
finally arrives.