NAVY ESTIMATES
LOWEST SINCE 1913
PERIL TO EMPIRE CARGOES
DEBATE IN COMMONS
United Press Association—By Electric Tele-
graph—Copyright.
(Eeceived Bth March, 2.30 p.m.)
LONDON, 7th March.
In the House of Commons, Sir Bolton Eyres Monsell, First Lord of the Admiralty, introducing the Navy Estimates, said that he felt like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as he had just returned from the Disarmament Conference. The' programme was rigidly limited by the Washington and London Naval Treaties, and he hoped that the Disarmament Conference would reduce the sizes of ships, including lighter cruisers. If it did not, we would be forced to build bigger and seek more cruiser tonnage.
S The present were the lowest Navy Estimates since 1913. Our danger -was not invasion, but the interruption and destruction of our mercantile marine. The Empire's ships and cargoes were worth seven hundred millions of pounds and were spread over eighty thousand miles of sea routes. For its security Britain needed many lightly-armed cruisers. This was a small insurance to pay for the security of our trade. Signor- Grandi had shown at Geneva that world expenditure on armaments frm 1925 to 1930 had increased by 126 millions sterling. British naval ex-' penditnre in this period had fallen by £8,000,000. . .
Mr. George Hall, ex-Labour Civil Lord of the Admiralty, said that Labour w6uld support the largest possible reduction of armed forces obtainable at"the Disarmament Conference. Had the Government, he asked, decided to slow down work on the Singapore Base. He knew the difficulties in view of the commitments of contractors and the generous contribution of the Dominions and colonies.
Sir Austen Chamberlain said that our Navy was incomparably weaker than before the war, and proportionately weaker than other naviest Year after year, in anticipation of disarmament m other lands, we had made drastic reductions while they had built up their forces... These .estimates were not measured by what was required for defence and the fulfilment of obligations. They were dictated solely by our extreme financial emergency, and only defensible on that ground
NAVY ESTIMATES
Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 57, 8 March 1932, Page 8
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Evening Post. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 New Zealand licence. This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in