RACE FOR SEA POWER.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 231, 29 September 1910, Page 5

RACE FOR SEA POWER.

OUR . LEAD IN THREE TEARS. BERESFORD'S PREDICTION. (By Cable.—Press __-.oclat_on.—Copyright) LONDON, September 28. _ In his open letter to Mr. Asquith, urging the raising of a loan to start seven Dreadnoughts, in addition to the five arranged for 1911, Lord Charles Beresford remarks that, reckoning Dreadnoughts alone, the position under existing arrangements three years hence will be that our superiority over Germany will be reduced to four ships, and we will be exactly equal to Germany and Austria combined, and inferior by four to the Triple Alliance. Within three years, he argues, it will he hardly possible to maintain supremacy in Home waters over one foreign Power, owing to the inexorable demands in the Mediterranean, due to the strength there of two members of the Triple Alliance. If his proposals are adopted the position in 1913-14 as regards Dreadnoughts will be-— Britain 32 Germany _. _. 21 Austria 4 • Italy 4 Thus, Britain's strength in Dreadnoughts will be 32, as against the Triple Alliance's 29, and with such a force and auxiliaries Britain's safety would be reasonably assured. ' The '"Daily News," commenting on Lord Charles Beresford's letter, protests against what it terms "farcical scaremongering." The Austrian Dreadnoughts, it says, have not yet been voted, and tlie Italian Dreadnoughts are-aimed against the Austrian. Germany, instead of 21 Dreadnoughts, would have 17 in the spring of 1913, and 21 in 1914, and Britain in the spring of 1913 would have, including the colonial ships and tlie Lord Nelsons, 29; and if she builds four this year she would have 33 in 1915, or eight beyond Lord Charles Beresford's calculation. In his speeches before the naval estimates came down, Dord Beresford proposed only four Dreadnoughts, with two more nest year, but he subsequently added that "circumstances will probably render it df_.iia.ble to lay the whole of these six ships down in 1910-1 L" He ha 3 since claimed six as necessary. He ateo suggested eighteen cruisers; the Admiralty asked for five only. Lord I Charles wanted twelve "anti-torpedo-boat destroyers"; the Admiralty asked for none. The member for Portsmouth j thought twenty-six torpedo-boat de- ' stroyert—__ould be laid down; the Admiralty specified for twenty-three, three I more than last yeaj. Lord Charles considered 'that two more floating docks should be put in hand this year; the i Admiralty agreed, and have provided 1 also for a graving dock. There were other items in Lord Charles's programme, j which meant a reversal of Admiralty ' policy —items referring to stores, coal reserves, replacing "dismantled repairing stations abroad" —which found no place in the official programme. While Lord Charles urged that 5,000 more men should he entered, the Admiralty have put down only 3,000. Tbe Board reached a total expenditure of, roughly, forty and a-half millions, whereas Lord Charles's estimate, as an "irreducible minimum," was five millions more—but in this case some of the expenditure was to be met out of a loan.