NAVAL POLICY.

Evening Star, Issue 18999, 22 July 1925, Page 6

NAVAL POLICY.

On tho authority of Mr Bridgemau, First Lord of tho Admiralty, all Britain’s obligations under the Washington Convention have been carried out. Not only did Britain begin to fulfil her obligations before other countries, but she completed them in advance of the due date. Whatever else the Convention has done towards its ostensible purpose of the limitation of armaments, it has facilitated tho scrapping of a good deal of obsolete and obsolescent tonnage. This has cleared the way for building programmes which do not flout the terms of the Convention. Tho man in the street may express surprise that disarmament proposals should work out in this way; but so it is. Other countries are-building. In February, 1924, the shipbuilding programme of tho world was 228 building or projected; in February, 1925, the number was 352. And this is all in accordance with the Washington Agreement. Britain’s contribution to tho 352 warships building or projected is only twenty. In 1923 Mr Amery, then First Lord of tho Admiralty, wanted twenty now units, including eight cruisers. Ho said that by 1935 our light cruisers would he worn out or obsolete. But because of finances ho had to cut hi-s building programme to the bone. Mr Ramsay MacDonald’s Labor Government followed, and retrenchment was oven more severe. During the debate on the Navy Estimates in March Mr MacDonald said that his Government found that rust rather than efficiency characterised the Admiralty, and the most his Government was able to do was to take care to maintain efficiency and knock off extravagances. However, it had taken its courage in both hands, and had authorised five cruisers being laid down last year instead of the eight which was the animal programme that was inherited. The position now is that tho Admiralty is eleven keels behind the original programme. In bringing down his Estimates four months ago Mr Bridgeman said that the legacy which ho had inherited from both his predecessors had pot him iu tho unfortunate position of having to make up this year what they had over-reduced iu previous years. But he did not on that occasion ask tho House to authorise him to begin doing so. The Estimates he brought forward contained no provision for new construction work. It had previously been decided to refer to a committee for report the whole question of tho programme of replacement of cruisers and other warships in order to draw up a programme spread over a number of years as a steady replacement work. This virtually meant that the 1923 programme of eight keels a - year was abandoned in favor of another, which the Government would take time to consider, and which would be announced in time to allow of a Supplementary Estimate being introduced before the close of the summer. It is over'this substitute programme that dissensions have developed in tho British Cabinet. On behalf of the Admiralty Mr Bridgeman demands that at least four cruiser keels should he laid down at once. What has been described as the “cold, clammy hand” of Mr Churchill would halve that demand. The Admiralty is between two fires from within its own party. The Unionist rank and file contains a section, headed by Air Storrey Deans, a Sheffield member, which would have a full building programme, subject to no more postponements, no other policy having ever before been followed or advocated by the Conservative Party, whether in office or iu opposition. On the other hand, there is Mr Churchill—-who would have to find tho money for construction, and who evidently does not see where it can possibly come from—backed by another section of the party, who consider Britain’s interests would bo served better by a margin on the right side in the national finances than by a margin of superiority over other fleets at sea. The Minister who holds tho purse has always to risk unpopularity with his colleagues of the spending departments; but, according to the ‘ Alorning Post,’ there is on this occasion much more in it than that. It suggests that ho secured entry into this Cabinet with tho purpose of disrupting it when he saw the opportunity, Mr Baldwin caused some surprise when he gave admittance and the high and responsible post at the Exchequer to this political chameleon, and there have before this been hints that if such things as a weakened Navy were tho price of Air Churchill’s support of the Conservative Party, then the price was too high. There is a certain incongruity in it being Air Churchill, himself a former First Lord of the Admiralty, putting his back to the wall when demands are made on him for expenditure on the Navy. It may be, as the * Alorning Post ’ suggests, part of a plan for self-advancement. Or it may ho a recognition of Britain’s very altered financial circumstances, and Ino expression of firm conviction on tho part of I one conscientiously administering them I that the country will have to cut its coat according to its cloth.