COST OF THE NAVY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 107, 9 May 1927, Page 8

COST OF THE NAVY.

GOVERNMENTS POLICY.

CONDEKHSD BT OWK PABTT.

COMMANDER HJLTOX YOUNG'S

CRITICISM.

(From Onr Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, March 15.

A Conservative weekly describes the delivery of the Conservative First Lord making his annual statement as hardly distinguishable from that of a treasurer of a prosperous cricket club informing the members, before the yearly dinner, that everything is in order with the club's finances and nobody need have any anxiety. In the face of such criticism from his own side Mr. Bridge* man obviously has had luck in carrying his department's load so welL A man of no particular capacity, yet year after year he gets through the House his colossal budget—this year one of £58,000,000 —without an effort. To continue this damning faint praise the "Saturday Review 5 " adds: "It is all done in a rather bored, quiet, confident and very good-natured manner which disarms criticism as much as it damps enthusiasm."

The truth of the matter is that no one has the courage to risk being dubbed a little navy-ite by, any criticism which would be effective enough to reduce the Estimates. Yet the Estimates need criticism, and, curiously enough, got it from their own side, from a man who had claims to be heard with respect in that ho is a financial expert and is an exnaval officer—Commander Hilton Young, in fact, who but lately left the Liberal ranks.

He was devastatingly effective in his criticism. "Since the war," he said, "the whole theory of naval defence has been in the melting pot. Does anyone think convincedly that he knows exactly in what direction naval theory and practice are moving? i venture to say he does not. Is aval theories are in the melting pot. ... At such a time what is wisdom? Is it to turn out big armaments? Of course not. Before they are finished they are out of date. ... Think of these two great battleships which are just being turned out. They have been five years in construction. Will they have much in their design which will not be out of date by the time they come into full commission? ... It is improvident to build in bulk during an experimental period. What is wanted is the rapid production of single experimental types. Think again of the relations between ships and the air. . . ."

Commander Hilton Young criticised the Government's cruiser programme and asserted that in 1930 we shall possess 71 to America's 25 and Japan's 32. At that very moment in America it was being asserted that present indications point to the rates 54—25 —15 in 1931, instead of the Washington rate of 5—5—3.

He declared with all emphasis that we are making the pace with no clear idea of what we are doing. For these heavy "light cruisers,"' carrying 8-inch guns, we "far bigger and more expensive than is necessary for the purpose of defending trade routes"—which is the nominal purpose for which they are being built. We can police our trade routes efficiently with a vastly lighter and cheaper type of vessel.

The Admiralty's passion for big ships, so it is alleged in some quarters, is due to the fact that the Sea Lords naturally like big and expensive toys to play with, and since they find the First Lord amenable in all respects to their will, and able, apparently, to push almost anything throngh the Cabinet and the Commons, they ask for things which they would never have dared to ask from "a McKenna or even perhaps from a Churchill.

Still more scathingly one weekly says: "Churchill or McKenna would have wanted at least to be able to defend their demands by reason in the House of Commons—which Mr. Bridgeman, apparently, neither wishes nor attempts to do. Next year, no doubt, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty hinted, the professionals, with their tongues in their cheeks, will "ask for much more. And who can blame them? Mr. Bridgeman has taught them that there are no evident limits to the generous complacency with which their 'expert' demands are likely to be met by the 'civilians' of Parliament."

Mr. Runciman went to the root of the matter when he said naral economies must come from the Admiralty itself, and the only way to reduce the Estimates was to reduce the Navy, but he was apprehensive of any reduction of our naval strength that was not accompanied by a corresponding reduction on the part of other Powers. Seduction, therefore, must come by international agreement. He hoped any new agreement would apply to cruisers as well as battleships, to submarines as well as to surface craft. An all-round naval reduction by agreement would be one of the greatest achievements this or any other Government could attain.

There was a hint in Commander Hilton Young's speech of the essential need for some co-ordination in defence questions, of the need to relate air requirements to the older services. Colonel Moore Brabazon, who has just been lost to the Government, having given up the Transport Ministry for private industry, drew attention to that subject which the present Government seems bent on burking, a Ministry of Defence. In short, Jlr. Bridgeman's most effective critics sat on his own side of the House and will one day want to be answered by more than the bored manners of an Eton boy. The call for real action comes from both sides of the House, but it takes a Tory organ to reveal the weakness of his own side. The political correspondent of the "Saturday Review" says under the appropriate heading, "The Comedy of Westminster":

"The air and the sea are the two elements nnnn the mastery of which the future of this country very likely depends. The discussion of Air and Admiralty Estimates should therefore provide opportunities for the most important pronouncements of policy, for the most searching criticisms, the most pregnant suggestions. There is no other occasion upon which the whole vital question of defence can be debated. The question is vital because in wartime our lives depend upon it, and in peace time it is responsible for the greater part of our annual expenditure. But when the opportunity occurs, advantage is never taken of it, and debates which might be of first-rate interest frequently peter out into a series of nagging speeches upon small points of local interest raised by members who represent constituencies with special grievance?." ~ T