NAVAL EXPENDITURE.
In his seventy-ninth year, "Jacky" Fisher, architect-in-chief of the modern British Navy, retains his characteristic strength of conviction and power of hitting hard and unconventionally. The mau who fifteen years ago jolted the Service out of a rut by ruthlessly "scrapping" largo numbers of ships that were eating their heads off hut would have been useless in battle, now declares that! the expenditure on the Navy, is "incredible and ruinous waste." He -would "scrap" the Fleet to-day as he "scrapped" it years ago, for half of it is obsolete now, and the other half will be obsolete before long. The old admiral is quite right; construction during the war has made obsolete even ships which when the war broke out were bulwarks of j Empire. As for some of the older ships, which the Admiralty is only now sending to their doom, they would be about as useful in a fleet action as that vision of an Australian orator —a Chinese junk fleet commanded by a Swiss admiral on horseback. They did good work during the war, and if there were another such war to-morrow they might do it again, but there is not going to be such another war—at least not to-morrow. Lord Fisher's vigorous appeal for a drastic curtailment of the Navy's paper strength follows the plea of Mr. Archibald Hurd? to which we referred the other day, for a five-years' cessation of construction. It also follows the new Government campaign for economy, one item in which has been the suspension of the building of no fewer than sixty ships. As we said in our recent comment, either these ships ■were needed orthcy were not; and if they were not, someone was guilty of great waste at a time when economy should have been the order of the day. This gives n sharper point to Lord Fisher's suggestion that the only way to get economy is "to sack the whole spendthrift crew neck and crop." One can easily imagin-s "Jacky" Fisher doing this if he were Prime Minister. He was always scornfully, and even cruelly, impatient of inefficiency, and if he couid he would have little hesitation in getting rid of the whole of the present Admiralty staff, from that popular but rather mediocre country gentleman Mr. Walter Long, through that very capable courtieradmiral Sir Rosslyn Wcmyss, down to the junior officers. His characteristic re-entry into the naval arena has an interest for the Dominions. On the same day that his outburst is reported it is stated that Lord Jellicoe's report to the Commonwealth Government recommends the maintenance of a very much larger Australian fleet, which two years hence would cost £5,000,000 annually. It is to include eight battle-cruisers, where before the war Australia maintained one, and Lord Jellicoe is reported to have informed the Government that the Admiralty would provide many of the vessels required. Would any "of these vessels be in the obsolete class condemned by Lord Fisher, and, if so, how many? The question is important, but it is only part of the larger question whether so large a fleet is necessary to Australia, and whether the country can afford to maintain it. In the year before the war the naval expenditure of Australia was about one million. It is a fair
argument that Australia, and for that matter all the Dominions, was paying less than its share of Imperial naval defence, but it may be retorted that after such a war the cost of the Empire's defence should be less than it was before the war. This statement about Lord Jellicoe's report is not official, but that will not prevent it causing uneasiness in Australia and New Zealand. One cannot help wondering whether in the case or New Zealand Lord Jellicoe will propose an increase of expenditure on the same scale.
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Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 209, 3 September 1919, Page 6
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639NAVAL EXPENDITURE. Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 209, 3 September 1919, Page 6
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