"PURE NONSENSE."

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 116, 17 May 1924, Page 13

"PURE NONSENSE."

AERIAL DEFENCE. FOR TRADE PROTECTION. NAVY LEAGUE ROUSED. (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.") CHRISTCHURCH, Friday. The Canterbury branch of the Navy League took strong exception at its meeting last night to the opinions recently published of local experts on naval and aerial schemes of defence. It is expected that the experts will have something further to say, for they can claim to be "dyed in the wool" experts compared with the well-meaning but rather antiquated members of the local branch of the Navy League. Last night Mr. C. J. Treleaven brought the matter up by stating that, according to an article on "Our Defences," two experts had been discovered. The first man had stated emphatically that the value of the Navy to-day "was much overestimated," and that "the most-up-to-date flying machines could be landed in New Zealand at a cost which was only a fraction of the cost of a modern cruiser."

"I don't think such opinions should go unchallenged," said Mr. Treleaven. "The opinions expressed are just on a par with the sentiments of the Little Englanders of Great Britain, who think only of their own country, and not of the Empire." He asked how petrol would be brought to the Dominion if there was no naval defence, and how the aeroplanes would be landed here if enemies had control of the sea. The experts had also forgotten that New Zealand was in a vastly different posir tion from England. England was in striking distance by aeroplane from the Continent, but up to the present date no one had flown to the Dominion from Australia, which was the nearest country. The opinions were lopsided, and they should be challenged.

. The chairman (Mr. W. Walton) said any suggestion that the Dominion could do without the _J_vy .was* pure nonsense. There were tens of thousands of miles of trade routes between the different parts of the Empire, and aeroplaneß could not at present be used for convoys, and were not likely to be available as such in the future. Even so, the cost would be many times greater than if cruisers were used. In the meantime the trade routes must be defended, and that was why the abandonment of the Singapore base meant practically the abandonment of New Zealand and Australia. The experts had confused the defence of New Zealand shores with the duty the Dominion owed as part and parcel of the Empire, and' they had appeared to forget that the aeroplane was no use whatever in protecting trade. The example of the Emden, which did £14,000,000 worth of damage, [showed what one cruiser might do even j with three navies hunting her. "Such I opinions are nonsense," he concluded.