NAVY LEAGUE CONFERENCE.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18304, 11 February 1925, Page 2

NAVY LEAGUE CONFERENCE.

THIRD CRUISER ADVOCATED. (PRISS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAM.) DUNEDIN, February 10. The Dominion conference of New Zealand branches of the Navy League opened this morning, Mr A. M. Ferguson (Auckland) presiding. Delegates were welcomed by the Mayor. Mr James Begg (Dunedin) was unanimously elected president for the ensuing year. The Canterbury remit advocating that not only a second but also a third cruiser should be added to the New Zenland division of the Navy, was carried, together with the Auckland remit expressing strong conviction that until New Zealand' contributes an equal per capita basis with' Great Britain, New Zealand was not bearing her fair share of the burden. (SPECIAL TO "THE FREgS.") DUNEDIN, February 101 In the course of his address, Mr Ferguson said: In this country we are now spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on improving our means of internal communications. It is money well spent, but the value of theso roads is insignificant compared with the value of that great highway, the sea, our only road to our markets. As the people, who ; in a sense, made that road. as the people who chiefly use that raid, and as people whose commercial existence depends on maintaining the freedom of that road, surely we New Zealanders, as Britons, are not such arrant fools as to grudge any expenditure on the protection of that road. That is so merely from selfish and commercial reasons. How much more deeply are we committed to its protection for national and Imperial reasons?

It is this view of the matter that must act as a constant stimulus to our Navy League in its propaganda. We all hope that the older generation today may never have any ruder reminder of the importance of sea power than the voice of the Navy League, and we would like to believe that there is a little ground for that hope. But certainly there is not sufficient ground to warrant us in slackening our efforts as a League. As regards the younger generation, though we may fervently nourish the same hope, it would be cruel to allow them to grow up in the belief that war is at an end, and that there is no further need to. worry about future dangers or their prevention. The Navy League is sometimes accused of fostering an aggressive spirit among the young. That, in plain language, is a lie. But what spirit would you rather foster in young New Zealand than that of courage, enterprise, endurance, discipline, and. sacrifice, and where are these qualities more attractively displayed, where more tellingly inculcated, than in the sea history of our Empire?