RIVAL NAVIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 166, 15 July 1910, Page 5

RIVAL NAVIES.

GERMANY'S BIG CRUISERS. FIVE AHEAD OF BRITAIN. LONDON, July 14. In the House of Commons to-day, Mt. R. McKenna (First Lord of the Admiralty) informed Mr. J. T. Middlemore (Unionist member for Birmingham North) that, excluding the armoured cruisers for the Dominions, ten British, as against fifteen German, armoured »hips were now under construction or bad been ordered. At a meeting of upwards of 40 Liberal members of the House of Commons, Mr. J. A. Murray Macdonaid |.re«.iding, it was decided to forward to .Mr. Asquith an emphatic protest against the now shipbuilding vote. Some difference of opinion was expressed regarding the desirability, in view of the gravity of the constitutional issue, of dividing against the Government. MARGIN OP SAFETY. FOUR ABOVE GERMANY'S. (Received 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, July 14. ' The House of Commons is devoting to-' night to the discussion of Mr. John Dil- i lon's motion for the reduction of the t shipbuilding vote by two millions. Mr. Asquith said tuat the British iDreadnoughts were never fewer than! four above Germany's. Mr. McKenna. said that 'Canada paid £215,000 for'the cruiser hfiobe for training purposes; In the "Nineteenth Century and After," Mr Edmund Cox points out that the cost oi the British Navy has risen from £17,500,000 in 1894 to £ 40,600,000, and that Great Britiain has before her I thp prospect of an annual budget of £00.000,000. "The burden that is being forced upon us is intolerable. We are being forced into national bankruptcy by this insane competition in armaments. If the Liberal party, in spite of its emphatic desire for retrenchment, in the face of 150 of its members signing a petition. for further reductions in naval expenditure, is, sorely against its wiU, driven to bring in Estimates of forty mfflions, what may be expected when a Conservative Government is in power? With its more lively sense of responsibility for national defence, with its determination to maintain our naval supremacy in all the seas, it wdl have to expend mUlions on millions in doing what has been left undone." According to the writer there are two alternatives, the one a rake's progress towards national bankruptcy; and one other.----"Is there no alternative to this endless, yet futile, competition in shipbiulding? Yes, there is. It is one which a CromweU, a WUliam Pitt, a Palmerston, a Disraeli would have adopted long ago. It is to say to Germany: 'All that j-ou have been doing constitutes a series of unfriendly acts. Your fair words go for nothing. Once for all, you must put an end to your warlike preparations. If we are not satisfied that you do so, we shall forthwith sink every battleship'and cruiser that you possess. The situation that you have created is intolerable. If you are determined to fight us. if you insist upon war, war you shall have; but the time shall be of our choosing I and that time shall be now.'* Not a shot ■ need be fired."