AUSTRALIAN NAVAL POLICY

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2370, 28 January 1915, Page 6

AUSTRALIAN NAVAL POLICY

COMMENDED AS SOUND. London, December 10. Reference to. the Australian naval policy is made by the London "Morning Post" in a leading article on "The .Empire and the War." "We learn much by war," says the "Post," and it proceeds, . "we learn who are our enemies and who are our friends, what policy is safe and wlidt policy is dangerous, and that political party will have most chance or future success in this country which grasps and acts upon the great national lessons which this war is teaching. And one of the greatest of these lessons is that the British Empire may be trusted to rally to the common cause, and ,that each part of the Empire strengthens the whole by freely doing its own particular share in the work. It would, 110 doubt, be invidious to compare the share of the Grown Colonies with the share of the Dominions in the common task; but this much may at least be said, that what has been and is being done best is the voluntary and spontaneous effort inspired by the local genius and spirit of the particular country concerned, and not imposed upon it by Whitehall. In Canada, Australia, and New Zealand the raising, equipping, and dispatching of their contingents was in each case a local work, conceived on a generous, Male and handsomely carried out. These contingents will.be found to justify the local efforts of the Dominions to create their own military forces, albeit with certain features, like words of command and calibre of ritles, in common. Even where the Central Authority and the Dominion were in conflict, it is tho Dominion judgment that is proving to be right.. Thus, for example, Australia insisted, against a great deal of opposition at this end, on having her own Navy, and this Australian Navy when war broke out was found to bo the right thing in the right place. Hie battle-cruiser Australia was strong enough to defend the Antipodes against the heaviest metal Germany possessed outside European waters, and the Sydney was the instrument, under Providence, of putting an end to the pernicious activities of .the Emdcn. And not only did Australia achieve this work of commerce protection and cruiser destruction 011 the «ea,_ but she also, with the co-operation of New Zealand, swept that part of the world clean of German colonies. And if only Australia had not been so long in the leading-strings of Whitehall and had developed this independent policy somewhat earlier,, we might not have been under tho necessity of applying for the good offices of our loyal and obliging ally in the East."