THE DREADNOUGHT.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2480, 10 May 1909, Page 5

THE DREADNOUGHT.

The Dunedin “Star’s” London correspondent writes:— The news of New Zealand’s great offer of two Dreadnoughts for the British Navy has taken England by storm. I know of no event, not even the sending of colonial contingents to South Africa, which has produced so deep a feeling or evoked so much warm recognition on the part of the Mother Country towards one of her self-governing Dominions. The news came upon London with dramatic suddenness. Imagine, if you can, a gloomy, foggy, winter’s day in Fleet street—a grey, uninspiring scene, dominated by the dull roar of traffic and the ceaseless sound of hurrying footsteps. New Zealand was far enough from the thoughts of that endless stream of human beings, each passing lay absorbed in his own affairs, with that peculiar intentness and abstraction which comes with long familiarity with London’s teeming thoroughfares. Then suddenly appeared the evening paper bills with “New Zealand Offers Two Dreadnoughts” in great, staring headlines, and the shrill voices ot the newsboys rose high above the din of the traffic. It was enough. The attention of the public was arrested. There was a rush for newspapers, and from that moment the one topic of the week, overwhelming all others in interest and importance, has been the patriotic action of New Zealand. It has captured the English imagination. Even the news from the Antarctic expedition, splendid as that was, has been dwarfed by the side of it. The talk had been all of New Zealand and the splendid spirit she has shown. Sir Joseph Ward and his colleagues were, of course, influenced solely by patriotic motives in making their ofler of two Dreadnoughts to the Mother Country, but in making it they have given “The Long White Cloud” the finest advertisement any colony has ever received. The action of the self-governing Dominions at the time of the Boer War opened the eyes of thousands at Home to the value of Britain’s Colonial Empire, and converted to Imperialism untold , numbers of those who were “Little Englanders,” by reason of sheer ignorance alone. But the colonies on that occasion all came along with oilers of help “as one man,” and it is to be feared that the eyes and thoughts of the old folk at Home were so intently fixed upon the theatre of the struggle that they had little chance of paying much attention to the particular sources whence England was deriving such magnificent aid in her dark hour.