Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. SATURDAY, JUNE 28th, 1913. NATIONAL DEFENCE.

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 June 1913, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. SATURDAY, JUNE 28th, 1913. NATIONAL DEFENCE.

According to a. cable message published by us yesterday, Lord Roberts is still insistently urging upon the attention of the Heine authorities that a system of universal military training is an absolute, necessity for the Empire’s defence. Presiding at a meeting of the National Defence League he referred once again to the South African War, asserting that during the struggle the lines of communication between Capetown and the front were broken on several occasions because the men had not been proper-, ly trained. Lord Roberts has ano repeatedly drawn public attention to what he describes as “the vulnerability of Britain’s sea coast to foreign invasion,” and bis appeals to the nation have resulted in the uprising of two distinct classes of military critics one supporting the famous Field Marshal’s views and the other ns yigoonisly opposing them. A writer jn the. “Fortnightly Review” argues that the peril from which England has to defend herself is not so much invasion as starvation—-the most terrible of all perils—and the defence against both dangers is the same: a supreme and invincible Navy., This line ot argument is of interest when a speech delivered in 1905 by Mr. A. J. .Balfour is remembered. He remarked that “if you drilled every man in this country to the picture of perfection now possessed by the German Army, or by any other great foreign military force, and if every young man of 20 was trained to arms, what would it avail you if the sea was not free and open to bring to these shores raw material and the food upon which we depend?” That is not the gospel according to Lord Roberts to-day, for he unduly stresses as a condition precedent the training and arming ot every available efficient male, probably because he has no doubt at all of the ability of the Navy to take care of the trade routes. Mr. Balfour added tnat “our neighbours across the sea may marshal their soldiers by they million ; but so long as we hold, as wo do hold, and must hold, the sea in strength, they cannot reach us. We can watch • the rivalry in bayonets without nervousness, assured mat those bayonets are more than matched by our naval guns and torpedoes, and that therefore these vast armies are imprisoned by •our squadrons and flotillas, and can harm neither us nor the Dominions.” That would be a very com foiling outlook if it were not for the fact that the belief is not shared by all the critics. Mr. IT. 0. Wells has serious doubts about Great Britain’s supremacy in means of defence or offence, am) in an article in the “Daily Mail” he submits tin* proposition that the next war will be fought with destroyers, submarines, and hydroplanes, of which instruments of war he says the Empire is woefully deficient. He says “The question that should occupy our directing minds now is no longer ‘How can we get more Dreadnoughts?’ but ‘What nave

wo to follow tho Dreadnought?’ - To] the Power that lias most nearly guessed the answer to that riddle, belongs the future Empire of the Seas. We j heed a new arm .to our service, rod . we shall need'it more and inure, .Did that arm is Research.” He urges the enlistment of the services of the pick •of the country’s chemists Mid physicists and engineers, getting them to work systematically upon the anticipation and preparation of our future war equipment. 1 There is singular unanimity on the part of military and naval experts that the.'- day of the Dreadnought is nearly over. The progress of invention makes both Ihe big ship and the big army more and more vulnerable and less and less effective. Smaller, more numerous, and more mobile contrivances are expected to take the place of the mon-strously-unweildy and enormously costly ships and armaments which are the craze just now. The tale of* the Franco-German war is not likely to find a parallel in the future. It is beyond the power of imagination at the present day to conceive the clash between an army of 187,500 men tGerman) and 732 guns, and another (French) of 112,800 and 520 guns, such as occurred at Gravelotte. That is not a possibility so far as Britain is conc?rned, and the numerous occasions upon which attempts to invade her shores have been foiled serve *' show that her danger does not lie in that direction. Interference with her sources of supply would most vitally affect her, and if her fleet of Dreadnoughts is in the last resort found to be unavailing to protect them, as Hie critics predict, wherein will her safety lie?