BRITISH NAVY ESTIMATES

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 69, 15 December 1919, Page 9

BRITISH NAVY ESTIMATES

♦ , STATEMENT BY THE, FIRST-LORD IMPERIAL NAVAL CONFERENCE (By Telegraph-Press. Association-Copyright London, December 11. Mr. Walter Long, First Lord of the Admiralty, submitted the Supplementary Naval Estimates, totalling eight millions. Mr. Long said the estimates of the year now amounted to 15S millions. The personnel at tho time of the armistice was 107.000. It was now 150,000. A thousand and five ships were, at the armistice, ordered or begun; and of these 011 had been cancelled, while 319 had now l>een completed, and 75 were being completed. The saving had been forty-six millions. All the homo waters, totalling 59,065 souare miles, had been swept clear of mines. The enemy had laid, in this area, during tho war, 11,000 niines, and all ihese had been' cleared up curing the hostilities except 74. Tho British had laid 65.302. of which one-third had been swent un. Sneaking in the House of Commons, ■Sir C Kinloeh-Cooke suggested the holding of a naval conference in conjunction with tho dominions, for the purpose of framing a true Imperial naval polic,\. Mr. ft. Lambert said he thought that the dominions should bo admitted to the Imperial Naval Councils. Sir .T. F. Flnnnery advocated the permanent, naval union of Britain and the dominions bv a. great Imperial Navy, manned by British subjects of the wholo Empire, for Imperial defence and Imperial unitv.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.