The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1936. THE PRICE OF SECURITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 8

The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1936. THE PRICE OF SECURITY.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the icrovg that needs resistance For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

"If the countries in Europe desire to stop an aggressor . . • they will have to be much more" ready for war than they are to-day," declared Mr. Baldwin in the House ot Commons three months ago, when justifying the large additional expenditure on the British defence services.- "That is a terrible conclusion, but it is a conclusion from which you cannot get away, because there are States which are ready in every way to-day, and there arc States which are not. The free States in Europe, the States in which freedom lives, have much leeway to make up before they would be in a position to deter the States ruled under other systems . . . It is doubtful whether the hope which Mr. Baldwin in that speech expressed for the future of collective security is as strong to-dav, although only three months have passed, for in that time the European situation has further deteriorated. There is evidence— the latest of which is in Mr. Neville Chamberlain's speech—that an influential body of opinion, probably now commanding a majority in the Cabinet, has concluded that the ideal of collective security cannot be realised, and that a possible alternative is to localise it and limit it. Whether or not such a policy is pursued, the situation from the point of view of Britain's Dominions will remain the same; they will be dependent in large measure for their security, and almost wholly for their prosperity, upon the British Navy.

In these circumstances the Auckland branch of the Navy League has done service in using the occasion of its annual meeting this week to make an appeal for stronger public support of the Navy, and for the policy of building it up to a strength commensurate with the needs of the British Commonwealth. In Britain it is recognised that the Navy.must be stronger than that of any possible enemy, because food imports are vital to the life of the nation, and the Government is nowembarked on a policy designed to ensure that food supplies can never be shut off. But from the point of view of the Dominions—and particularly of Australia and New Zealand much more is needed. They are dependent upon their exports to Britain for the means with which to buy the goods and services upon which their standard* of living depends. Neither exports nor imports, nor the territorial security of Commonwealth and Dominion, can assured without strong naval protection.

Who is to pay for the Dominions' naval protection ? Britain in the past has paid a large part of the bill, but it is foolish and unfair to expect that, while maintaining a Home Fleet and a Mediterranean Fleet, to say nothing of squadrons elsewhere, she will be content to go on paying any part of the cost of the Dominions' protection which they can reasonably afford, If the Dominions want to feel as secure as they felt before the war—and' they do—they can have the security at a price, but among them they must subscribe more towards the price. ••

The president of the Navy League deplored the apathy of the public. Such apathy probably is not rooted in ignorance or disregard of the. dangers inherent in insufficient naval protection, but in a feeling (stronger probably in New Zealand than in Australia) that this is primarily Britain's business. If it were ever so, it is not so now. Australia, until the depression obliged the Government to make drastic "cuts," maintained a naval squadron, the Royal Australian Navy, which in war time was of great value in the Pacific. That squadron was built up, and now is being rebuilt, on a basis of national pride and popular support. It is felt to be "Australian." Nationalistic sentiment can be perverted, but it is properly used when it is aroizsed in support of the nation's defences. It could be so . aroused and used in New Zealand, in support not only of the Navy, but of the other Services which have a part to play in the Dominion's defence.