LIMITATION OF ARMAMENTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 68, 18 September 1906, Page 5

LIMITATION OF ARMAMENTS.

_ — -9 1 BRITAIN CANNOT AFFORD TO BE WEAK. SPEECH BY THE MINISTER OF : WAR. fPBESS ASSOCIATION.! LONDON, 17th September. In a' Eecond speech •at Nowcastlo Mr. Haldanc-, Minister of V r ar, said that no tinglo nation wan able to reduco armaments, though ho believed the day was approaching when the democracies would initiate a movement for reduction. Meanwhile, Britain could not afford to bo weak, and must put her • forces on ' tho best possible footing. Mr. Arthur Lee, M.P., late Civil Lord to the Admiralty, had an instructive articlo in the National Review of August, entitled "A Plea for Maintaining our Battleship Programme.' 1 "A new portent," he wrote, "has appeared on the naval horizon in the sh;ipo of tho Dreadnought end her sister ships, which have discredited all existing typos of 'firstclass' battleships, arid rendered the present comparative tables Loth useless and misleading. The secret of tho Dreadnought has been wsll preserved, but it is now common knowledge that she carries ten 12in guno (of a now type, far more powerful than any previously mounted), and her "gunpowder is thus at least twice that of any other existing 'lust-class' battleship. Sho is also more poyrorfully armoured than any ship in existence, and is practically unsinkable. Her epeed and coal endurance are sufficient to enable her to overhaul and outmanoeuvre any battleship now afloat, and all theso qualities combined will enable her. to chooso h-er pafeition as to range, and to destroy any existing antagonist at her leisure."