SEA POWER DECLINING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 307, 29 December 1931, Page 8

SEA POWER DECLINING.

BRITISH FLEET "ECLIPSE."

"The British fleet is suffering an eclipse, and apparently the country is indifferent, failing to realise its increasing peril."

This was one of the many startling statements to the Institution of Naval Architects, when Admiral Sir HerbertRichmond and Sir Archibald Hurcl both spoke on the present state of British sea power.

They dealt with the merchant navy as well as the fighting fleet.

Sir Archibald Hurd, dealing with the Mercantile Marine, said that replacing the liners and cargo boats sunk during the war cost the British shipping companies £137,000,000 more than the insurance money paid for the losses. Other nations were outbuilding us to-day. The tonnage now on the British register was only 400,000 more than it was on the eve of the war, while foreign merchant navies had increased bv nearly 14,000,000 tons.

Admiral Richmond drew attention to the fact that there was the definite decline in British strength in European waters within recent years.

"We are at present in the midst of 'a fight from the Navy,' to use a wellknown financial phrase," he said. "We are not at present providing a sufficiency of the only instrument that can protect us against isolation.

"Invasion of Britain to-day is less a danger than isolation of the parts. of the Empire which feed each other. The danger of isolation is greater than it has ever been before."

The decline in our strength was not only due to the need for economy. It also arose from undue devotion to the ideal of material. We had been content with the growth in size of ships and a diminution of numbers. We had been dominated by pure questions of material. At the Disarmament Conferences we had seen an undue subservience to the formula of tons ancl guns. We now had a new obsession— that the number of destroyers we build was related to the number of subniar-ines-ogafid.-abioad, 1