"OUR FAIR WHACK"

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 129, 1 June 1926, Page 10

"OUR FAIR WHACK"

TOWARDS NAVAL EXPENDITURE

WHAT THE FLEET MEANS TO , • NEW ZEALAND. .

An appeal for support for the Navy League was made by Commander J..H. Middleton, secretary of the Auckland branch of the league, at the Rotary Club this afternoon. The speaker said he had been twentyfive years in the "Silent Service," and that was why he talked so much nowadays; lie had been addressing gatherings of school children all the morning. The navy League, he said, was the advertising department ot the Navy. Unfortunately the league was so modest that the Navy did not know that the league existed. A navy league was built up in Germany before the war, and in two years gained over two million members. In America the same thing was being done, and-the league was backed officially by the Navy. In the British Empire the league was not recognised officially, but it was admitted during the Great War that had it not been for the work of the Navy League in the years before the war, the Navy would not have been in anything like the state of efficiency that it was in when the war broke out. 1' We are trying to bring home to the people of the Dominion," he said, '' the need for a really adequate Navy. I .think most people realise it when you come to talk to them, but they don't realise it to the extent of doing anything to help. .-..,. Not until we have formed .public opinion will \we get an adequate vote/for naval purposes. We in New Zealand are paying on an average of 8s per head towards the upkeep of the Navy, and the Old Country, with all hqr troubles of unemployment, etc., is paying at the rate of 24s lOd per head. We are not doing one-third of our whack, and yet we are all sitting down very happily in the richest and most prosperous part of the entire Empire. We want to do our whack. We are a very lusty kid out here, and we don't want the Old Country to do our bit. "Should we lose the freedom of the seas for three months," he said, with the characteristic directness of the naval man, "the whole blessed lot of you would be bust. It is worth considering whether-you should not take' a little activojinterest in the matter. If you give it a little consideration and i think of what your real responsibility is, every, one here would become at least a fellow—that is a guinea—of the league." Commander Middleton concluded his address with some humorous sidelights of naval life.