SINGAPORE BASE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 121, 25 May 1927, Page 12

SINGAPORE BASE.

DOMINION'S CONTRIBUTION.

"AN ARMAMENTS GESTURE."

\r. "SENTIMENTS OP MILITARISM."

LABOUR REPLY TO MR. COATES

{By Telegraph.—Press Association.) GREYMOUTH, this day. Speaking at Cobden last night, Mr, H. E. Holland, Leader of the Opposition, said Mr. Coates had taken almost a month to reply to his statement in respect to the Singapore base proposal, issued on April 26. In this ease the public difficulty would be that, except in so far as the Wellington papers were ' concerned, they would hare had no ' opportunity of seeing his (Mr. Holland's) pronouncement. The full text of the statement had been handed to the Press -Association owe only a condensation of .it;had been allowed to go out. On the 'other hand, the Press Association had ; sent out 1000 words of Mr. Coates' reply. »Xlr. Holland said that the Prime in his reply ignored his contention that the Singapore proposal was in 'itself a direct violation of the spirit iwliieh led to the Washington Conference ' decisions, pointing in the direction of disarmament. The Prime Minister had also ignored the fact that when they talked of Singapore they had Japan (their recent ally in the World War) in mind, as the potential enemy. The *lmilding of Singapore would stand for a challenge to Japan, and would provide her militarists with an incentive to build a rival base in the Pacific. Quite recently Japan had suffered great physical and economic disasters, and the pronouncements of her public meii did not indicate designs on territories in the Pacific area. "Designs 7 ' of japan. Mr. Coates now said the immediate was the naval base at Singapore. This could only mean that ,in his opinion Japan hiad immediate -designs on British possessions in the Pacific. Why did Mr. Coates think so? The public were entitled to know the reasons which had led the Government to change its view in respecf\to Japan. If, during the war, any Labour party member had ever suggested that Japan had designs on British territory, he would have gone to prison for at least a year. In his plea for the retention and extension of armaments Mr. Coates had substantially re-echoed the sentiments of Prussian militarists of the pre-war period, and no doubt the militarists of Japan, when they took up the challenge and started to make a faster pace in the race for armaments, would employ similar language to that of Mr. Coates, and would talk about the need for maintaining intact the Japanese Empire, even though there should be no ia'ciiawe Whatever to it. Mr. Coates relied on Mr. Baldwin's statement that there could be no more valuable contribution to the defence of the Empire as a whole than assistance towards the Singapore base, but he forgot that a far more able Prime Ministev than Mr. Baldwin had turned the project completely down. He also forgot that eminent naval authorities, including the late Admiral Sir Percy Scott had declared that as a means of defence the Singapore base would be valueless. Everybody knew that the war of the future, would be fought from the air and the laboratory, but Mr. Coates had been quite silent as to this phase of the question.

Money Without Borrowing?

In arguing that the vote <$f £I,ooo*ooo for' Singapore would only artiownt t% a yearly increase in the expenditure of -jd per head of the population* jfr. C'oates definitely committed himself to a j>romise that the money would come out of Consolidated Fund and not be borrowed. The Prime Minister had pointed to the fact of the last financial year's surplus to prove that it would hot be necessary to borrow, and the revenue would furnish the contribution, hut with characteristic carelessness Mr. Coates passed by the fact that the half-million surplus last year was accidental. Hia own Minister of Finance had already explained that he could hot have got that surplus if it had not been for the trouble in Britain. Because the coal owners locked out the British miners foreign goods came to Sew Zealand instead of British, and foreign goods had to pay a higher duty; consequently the cost of living went up, possibly to the extent of £1,000,000. Consequently, also, the Minister of Customs collected £594,tW0 more than he would have done if the goods coming in had been British, and so the Minister of Finance had a surplus of £587,000 instead of a possible deficit of £7000. But, saW Mr. Holland, Mr. Coates could hardly rely on the British coal owners to give him another lockout this year, and if the volume of imports should again fall and there were no surplus, what wohH be the Minister's position? Would he honour his word that the money for Singapore would not be borrowed? Mr. Coates, said the speaker, had openly confessed that the releasing of his announcement regarding the Singapore contribution on the eve of Anzae Day was an armaments gesture, and there would be many outside the ranks of Labour who would regret both the fact and the confession. Mr.. Coates seeded to-think the best feturn Ihey could make to the men who died on Gallipbli would be to lea'd in a new race for arniairients. The Labour movement thought the better way would be to honour %h© assurance given to those who lived, as well as those who died, that Ihfe war was to tend war, and to do this by giving a lead in laying perirfsmently the foundations of world peace.