BRITISH NAVAL POWER

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 98, 22 October 1924, Page 5

BRITISH NAVAL POWER

REDUCTION SUICIDAL

1 DANGER OF LABOUR POLICY.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPIRIOHT.)

(PUBLISHED IN THE TIMES.)

(Received 22nd October, 10 a.m.)

LONDON, 21st October.

"The Times" in a leader says: "Even from -. the purely British and Imperial viewpoint the power of. the Navy has been brought down to a point perilously near the margin of safety, and any further reduction would be suicidal madness. . ,

"The determination of the country's naval strength is, or should be, a question outside the region of party politics, but the trouble is that the Labour Party and many Liberals, in their consuming zeal for universal peace and disarmament, blind themselves to the reality of the danger. Mr. MacDonald and his party declined' to carry out. the full programme ■of naval construction, modest as it was, which their predecessors regarded as the minimum essential for safety. "There are, no doubt, among the more temperately-minded members of the Labour Party many who are alive to the vital necessity of maintaining the N avy at the f u jj strength p erm jtt e d by the Washington Agreement, " but here, as elsewhere, the party as a whole has shown that its'policy is dictated by the fear of its extremists, so that they cannot be trusted to take the necessary precautions for the "safety of the country, the supply of its food, ~and the security of its'lmperial communications."