NAVAL STRENGTH

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 78, 12 January 1928, Page 5

NAVAL STRENGTH

UNITED STATES NEEDS. IN NO SENSE COMPETITIVE. PROTECTION OF HER PEOPLE

(Per Press Association—copyright.) (Received This Day, 9.50 a.m.) WASHINGTON, January 11. Before the House of Representatives Naval Affairs Committee, the Secretary for the Navy (Mr R. B. Wilbur) revealed that the building programme involving £160,000,000, which he recommended to Congress, was drafted as a five-year programme for the immediate needs of the Navy. It was regarded only as a start. He recommended an additional 20-year programme of building replacement, which should provide 43 10,000-ton cruisers and additional submarine destroyers. Mr W T ilbur emphasised that the fiveyear programme meant no competitive building. It was not proposed" to meet the building programmes of other nations. The Secretary explained, however, that this brought the United States Navy well within the equality ratio fixed by the Washington Conference, compared with Great Britain, and "Slightly above the five—three ratio with Japan." Mr Wilbur cited the insistence of great Britain at Geneva: of her need for increased tonnage, regardless of that of other Powers, as persuasive evidence of the United States' need for increased cruiser tonnage. He aho said that such a programme for the United States was in no sense competitive, to which President Coolidge is said to be opposed. He said the programme was based simply on the needs of the United States Navy, determined by the Naval Technical Board. Mr Wilbur said it would cost the United States a billion dollars to build cruisers to the limit set by Britain. He said the ships built under the 20-year programme represented a conservative estimate of the actual protective needs. To build enough immediately would be too great a burden on the nation's peace-time activities, but if the 20-year programme were carried out, and a reasonable burden placed on the Government, the danger of war would be greatly minimised. The United States needed a "first-class navy." The naval building programme was based on the Navy's needs, in the same sense as the city's police force was based upon the estimate .of its needs for the protection of the public. A report accompanying Mr Wilbur's statement to , the Committee said: " Smart-looking, modern cruisers create a prestige that aids merchants and manufacturers 'in building up trade abroad, and the measure of commercial success is influenced in no small degree by the prestige which up-to-date, smart-looking cruisers create and foster."