A STRONG NAVY

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 21, 24 July 1936, Page 9

A STRONG NAVY

—♦ URGENCY STRESSED MAINSTAY OF PEACE IMPRESSIVE SPEECH (From ."The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, June 27. Sir Samuel Hoare, in a speech on Imperial defence at a dinner of Hie Hoyal Empire Society at the Hotel Victoria last night, referred to the need for speed in the re-armament programme, and discussed the questions of the effect of air power on the Navy, and of the uses of the Fleet under a system of collective security. General Sir Alexander Godley presided. . Sir Samuel Hoare at the outset spoke of the need of co-operation ■between the Services, and said that Imperial defence as a whole, not the advantage of this or that Service, was what was in the minds of the best men in the Navy, Army, and Air Force. We had no time for delay in carrying out our programme of rebuilding a ' Navy strong enough to beat the enemy's j fleet and to keep the seas open for our [supplies and an Air Force of equal power to any within range. Speed was one of the overriding essentials in our, re-armament programme. When he insisted upon speed he meant neither irresponsible panic nor fatalistic resignation to the course of events. In his considered view there was no need for panic nor was there any need to assume that war was inevitable. No country in Europe desired war and because no country in Europe desired war it was criminal folly to assume that war was inevitable. Therfe was, however, so "much inflammable material)in Europe that even though no country desired war, a spark might start a conflagration unless great Powers like ourselves were strong enough to make our influence felt in the cause of peace. That is why we were bracing our nerves and strengthening our muscles. That was why the Board of Admiralty and he were doing their utmost still further to accelerate our naval programme. We were re-arming to stop the drift to war, and British re-armament would I prove for ourselves and for the world the best possible treatment for the! morbid and pathological position of the world that stimulated this dangerous talk about the inevitability of war. If the British Army, Navy, and Air Force were adequately strengthened and were strengthened in time, there was going to be no world war. ATTACK AND DEFENCE. Discussing the question whether itj was possible to build a Fleet that could I go anywhere, and carry out its traditional responsibilities in the face of the changes created by air power, Sir Samuel Hoare said that if the extreme partisans of the new arm were right and the aeroplane could force impotence upon surface ships, Great Britain and the British Empire, being anj oceanic Power and dependent for their life-blood upon surface ships, would be faced with a new and tremendous danger. It was the duty of the Admiralty! to meet this danger.' It was their duty to light the old battle of the defence] against the attack, that was to say, to develop in the closest contact with the world of science the defensive means of dealing with the aeroplane, whether it were by guns or armour or design. Neither they nor he would ever^be so foolish as to say that the defence had caught up with the attack. This1 old battle between the defence and the attack was never finished. He would say no* more today than that great changes had taken place on both sides of the account in the years since the war and that it was a foolish mistake to criticise' in the terms of 20 years ago. If he was asked whether the advent of air power had changed the".functions of the Navy and had made it impossible to build a fleet that could carry out its traditional duties, his answer was "No." His advisers were determined, with the help and practical experience of modern science, to build a fleet that could go anywhere, and they were determined to make the fullest possible use of air power, the very power that was assumed to have made the surface ship an antiquated anomaly, to make the new fleet once again the predominant and most mobile force of peace in the world. TWO LESSONS. |On the question whether it was; I necessary to build a new fleet when ■under the Covenant of the League we could depend upon; the effective cooperation of all the peace-loving States, Sir Samuel Hoare said that experience had shown that we had not yet achieved this ideal. There were two lessons that emerged from our experiences of the last six months, and both of them bore directly on the position of the British Navy. The first lesson was that collective security in actual practice meant the British Fleet in the Mediterranean. If the pacifists had had their way and the Fleet had been irretrievably weakened or abolished in recent years, there would have been no collective security at all. If the Fleet had been twice as strong as it was today, ihe believed that the crisis would never have arisen. As it was the Fleet in the Mediterranean was the embodiment of collective security. In spite of the criticisms of the ignorant, it had completely fulfilled its duty of preventing an extension of the conflict. So far from the Navy having lost prestige by its concentration in the Mediterranean he claimed that once again it had efficiently performed its traditional duty; that it -had learnt valuable lessons from the' crisis, and that this foolish talk of lost prestige, most of it spread about by enemy propagandists, mischievous in itself, would be proved altogether. futile in the future. The second lesson was that though in theory the combined strength of 50 nations might mean a formidable military force, in practice the value of the' force depended entirely on the willingness of the various countries not only to go to'war with an aggressor but to be prepared for war i£ and when the aggressor made his attack. He made no recriminations against any country; he merely stated the fact that the only member-State of the League that \yas prepared even to make effective preparations was Great Britain. ~ . •• BRITAIN AND U.S.A. These lessons showed that the League, no less than the world of the nineteenth century, depended upon a strong ■ British Navy as one of the great factors of peace. This fact, it was interesting to note, was attracting attention in the United States of America. He observed in the current number of the chief journal of the American Navy League a plea for cooperation between the British and American Navies to make future world wars impossible. Let them take note of it with interest and sympathy. Secondly, the absence of collective military action in the autumn showed that the British Empire, while it would do its utmost to achieve the ideal of collective security, must still depend upon its imperial defences and particularly upon a strong British Navy. These lessons deserved to be pondered calmly and dispassionately by

ourselves at home and by our friends in the Dominions. In spite of the changes that had taken place in the world the fundamental fact remained that the Empire depended for its life on its sea communications, that within these shores our normal slocks of food supplies were only for six weeks, and of raw materials three months, that the oversea trade of Great Britain was more than one thousand millions a year, and that if it came to an end employment would be brought to a standstill and bankruptcy and starvation brought within sight.