The Press. MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1909. THE NAVY.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13610, 20 December 1909, Page 6

The Press. MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1909. THE NAVY.

Tho Liberal Party at Home are, apparently, in some straits to convince the British public that it can sleep soundly at night without fear of invasion or attack. The First Lord of the Admiralty has found it necessary to administer to the electors another dose of his verbal soothing syrup, fortified by a recital of what the Government are doing in the way of shipbuilding. Tho list was no doubt sufficiently impreseive to allay the anxiety of anyone who was satisfied with half the story—the other half would set forth what Gfermany • has done and is still doing, and on that point Mr McKenna seems to have been discreetly silent. But he was. surely straining the "credulity of his 'hearers a little too much when he claimed for tie Government ,the credit for , the Dreadnoughts given to the Empire by New Zealand and Australia. "He "mentioned that as only one of the " great efforts at Empire consolidation " undertaken by the present Govern- " ment,' and it would be a lasting " memorial to the fame of the Liberal " Government." This is unadulterated impudence. If Mr McKenna had done his duty to the nation and the Empire there would have been no possible reason or excuse for New Zealand and Australia to offer two millions each for. the strengthening of the Navy. Under the, circumstances it was quite the right thing to do, but the fact of the offers being made was in a- sense a reflection upon Mr McKenna's administration, because they were the result of a conviction that the British Government did not*—or would not—realise the danger of failing to Tespond to Ger* maay's challenge. The Asquith Government were about as much entitled to pat themselves on- the back for our gift of a Preadnought as the Balfour Government would have been entitled to take credit for the contingents we sent to South Africa. It is rather unfortunate for Mr McKenna that just at the time when ho was assuring one audience that all was well with ftie Navy and the Empire under his watchful care, the irrepressible Lord Charles Beresford was emphasising the shocking neglect of the Government to profit by warnines they received more than three and a half years ago, as to the preparations that Germany was making for increasing her shipbuilding facilities. Much of the story was told last June, but Lord Charles dotted the "iV and crossed the "fs," recounting the incident with details which gave it fresh interest. On June 17th, in answer, to a question by one of the Birmingham members, Mr McKenna said the Government had known early in 1906 that Messrs Krupp's works were being extended. As a matter of fact— though the First Lord did not say so— they had then been informed by a private firm who had done work for iue Admiralty, that Krupps were preparing to turn out annually, if needed, gun-mountings sufficient for eight Dreadnoughts, a development of their works which could only point to a determination on the part of Germany to hurry on its ship-building programme. Gun-mountings, it may be mentioned, are the elaborate apparatus upon which the heavy guns of a ship are mounted—huge and complicated pieces

of machinery, rising from the bowels of a ship to the upper deck, and including the barbettes and the ammunition lifts. The Government not only took no notice of the information given to them, but they put forward their disarmament proposal at TheHague Conference, and dropped a battleship out of their building programme for the next two years, and two battleships out of the third year's programme. They acted, indeed, as they might have done if Knmps had closed down their works instead of expanded them. Furthermore, Mr McKenna's admission of what the Government knew early in IDO3 was diametrically opposed t? what he and Mr Asquith had said in the House a few weeks before. On that occasion the First Lord said:— "Two years anyone familiar with tho capacity of Krupp's and other great German firms -would have ridiculed the possibility of their undertaking the supply of all the component parts of eight battleship? i n a single year. To-day, this productive power is a realised fact, and it will tax the resources of our own rrreat firms if wo are to retain the supremacy in rapidity and volume of construction.' , Mr Asquith, on the rame nisht. declared that the Government first knew, or heard of, tho real state of affairs in Germany in tho previous autumn (November, 1908), " and it was in view "of that most grave, and, to us, not "only unforeseen, but unexpected, "state of things, that wo had to re- " consider our programme of the pres- " ent year. . . . "When we had that state. " of things brought home to us it was "a great surprise to us." We do not pretend to reconcile, these statements with Mr McKenna's subsequent admission that the Government in 1906 knew what was going on. Apparently., however, they were not grateful for the information, for ever since they seem to have dropped their informants from the list of firms receiving Government orders. It should take a good deal to convince the British public that thcGovernment hare not, in this vital question of national defence, been guilty of wilful blindness and a besotted determination to cut down the expenditure, no matter how great the risk.