RIVAL ARMAMENTS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 79, 27 December 1907, Page 5

RIVAL ARMAMENTS.

FRANCE AND GERMANY. PARIS PRESS ASKS FOR MORE GUNS. GADKE ON THE NAVY. BX TBLEGIUrH— riIESS ASSOCIATION—COrVRIGHT. (Rec. Dec. ?6, 8.27 a.m.) Paris, December 25. Tho French Press insist on tho necessity for incessant vigilance, owii-<j to Germany constantly strengthening her svrategic advantages' on the frontier. Tho newspapers complain that a Fronch army corps possesses only 95. quick-firing : guns, against Germany's 160, and urge that it is imperative- jto reiiiforco the French Artillery to the oxter.fc of 240 more batte'rios. : § .'■'}.- . Berlin, December 25. Colonel. Gadke, a German authority, on defence matters, writing to tho "Berliner Tageblatt," declares that after 1912 tho mere necessity of keeping tho Government workshops employed would result in the establishment of an unwritten navy law compelling 'tho laying down of four battleships yearly; yet tho extremists aro agitating for tho construction of six battleships yearly.

Whether or not France is deficient in the number of her field-guns,: thoir quality is warmly praised by a correspondent who writes to the "Pall Mall Gazetto," and who states that they are "at present inferior to nono in the armies of -Europe." lie further notes that Franco armed . her batteries with these new- field-Runs without making any . demands for a special credit.. "Neither Parliament nor tho public was informed, and the conversion of the 'material' was carried out without the military authorities boing hampered by public discussion which would have revealed their intention to foreign powers." '■ . Colonel Gadke is an authority on all de-fences-land and sea and air. Dealing with tho question of the battleship as against the balloon, he recently ventured the opinion that the latter will not soon cause a change to be mude in the relative strength of navies—tquse an example, it will not "essentially? diminish the insular character of England." !