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Evening Star, Issue 14633, 1 August 1911, Page 4

The simultaneous publication in Ottawa and London of the Imperial Naval naval arrangement!, enDeffiiice. tcred into lest Juno be tween Great Britain and the Oversea Dominions of Canada, Australia, and New (South Africa having decided to do nothing further at present than to continue the payment of a naval subsidy) has come at an opportune time. They confirm the sanguine hopes of patriotic citizens in all parts of the Umpire, and establish indirectly the accuracy of Mr Fisher’s indignant repudiation of the doctrine of Imperial Union ascribed to him by Mr W. T. Stead. We rejoice over belli announcements. It was not pleasant to hear that the Federal prime Minister had been represented as committing himself to an endorsement of iho pestiferous and impossible evangel of the South African ‘ Volksstem,’ which, in turn, has fallen bock by way of vindi-

cation uponsoma vaguer and isolated pronouncements of Sir H’ilfrid Laurier. We knew that tho Australian people ■were round and sane on each and every question touching the union and honor of the Empire, and there was a difficulty in harmonising Mi Fisher’s public utterances with , the dogmatic and'dictatorial statements that were set forth .with such detailed and prims facie authenticity in the ‘Review of Reviews.’ Happily, they have been characterised by their alleged author as “brutal, monstrous, and insane,’’ which is much stronger than the terms the majority of his critics applied to them. What these affirmed was that any such doctrine of Empire as Was credited to Mr lusher was an impossible one, and what the publication of the Naval Agreement to which'we have referred does is to make plain that the Commonwealth, through its Prime Minister, is one of the authors of and parties to the agreement. Mr Fisher could not, therefore, very well have said what Mr Stead says he did say. The importance of the agreement in its relation to Imperial and local Naval Defence may be briefly set forth. In an address at Pontypool on June 13 last the First Lord of tho Admiralty spoke as follows: He was happy to say that the naval arrangements made with the Dominions were most satisfactory. . . - Each

of the Dominions would contribute in tho fashion most appropriate to its reeources and its internal public opinion to the strength of the Empire. Some would do it by direct contribution to tire power of the British Fleet, either by annual payment or by the gift of skips, or both; others by the development of fleets of their own. In the latter ease there would be. interchangeability of officers and men and such common standards of training and discipline as to ensure, in tho event of war, that tho joint fleets would be able to act in complete union. The defences of the gigantic oversea trade of the Empire was a colossal task. This trade traversed tho ocean in every part of the globe. Groat es -was the British trado, that of the Dominions in proportion to the population was not less important, and the people of this family of nations had a common interest and care in its protection. The statesmen of the Dominions had joined with tho Government in providing and maintaining the necessary means of defence, and while there was to be no interference with tho autonomy of each member of the Empire, tho foundations bad been laid of a naval strength which, it combined in war, would safeguard Imperial interests in every part cf 1 lie globe. Sir W. Laurier, at Ottawa, and Mr II arcourt (the Colonial Secretary), in the House of Commons, have now made public the nature of those arrangements, which confirm the original intimation made by Mr M‘Kenna. The points of interest are : (1) That tho local fleets in their own waters are wholly under the orders of their own Governments; (2) that when in foreign waters they take their orders from, and report to, the British Admiralty ; (3) that in war time all ships pass automatically over to the sole control of the British Fleet; and. most important of all, (4) that there shall be an interchange of officers and men and common standards of training and discipline so as to ensure in time of war that the joint fleets would act in complete union. It is apparent that the Naval Agreement makes for Imperial unity of the most desirable kind. Absolute freedom of action and unquestioned control in all that pertains to local as opposed to international action are the foundations on which the new arrangement rests, the Imperial Navy assuming command only in foreign waters oxafter hostilities have been decided on. Tho London ‘Times’ regards this as tho true test of an efficient naw :

It may bo taken as an axiom, established by the whole course of naval history, that efficiency in naval warfare depends above all things on those moral and personal factors which make no show at all in a merely material comparison of strength, but which count for everything, or for nearly everything, on the day of battle—on sound and engrained conceptions of the strategy' and tactics that make for victory, on clearheaded direction and undivided command. on uniform standards of training and discipline, on continuity' of inspiring tradition and common loyalty to its inspiration, and finally on the spontaneous and almost automatic harmony that is engendered by all these agencies between the mind of the eommander-in-chief and the minds of his subordinate officers.

Every student of nava-l history will recognise the justice of this contention. Allied fleets have never worked together with the same singleness of purpose and aim, nor with the came efficiency, ns fleets under one flag, and inspired by common traditions. Ships and guns—the mere material of a navy—no matter what their numerical superiority, will not count or tell in the day of Armageddon so much ns will the moral and personal factors. There were, perhaps, some grounds of apprehension, ‘ The Times ’ thinks, when it was first intimated that Australia and Canada intended building navies of their own, whether the men of the old and new worlds would regard their duty as members of the Navy from the same glorious standpoint. We think that under the new dispensation this fear will soon pres away. What the statesmen of England and of the Oversea Dominions (to whom Mr M.‘Kenna paid a high compliment) have done is to establish a common standard, to break down barriers of exclusiveness, to provide ways and means for interchanges of officers and men, and to pave the way for the creation not of a British Navy, or an Australian, or a Canadian Navy, but for a genuine Imperial Navy that, in the words of Mr M‘Kemia, will bo able to “safeguard Imperial interests in every part of the globe.”