SECURITY OF NATION

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 256, 12 October 1932, Page 7

SECURITY OF NATION

DISARMAMENT QUESTION. “ONLY LINE OF DEFENCE.” New Plymouth, October 11. A plea for a more sane viewpoint on the question, of disarmament was made by Commodore F. Burges-Watson, commanding the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, in an address at a luncheon of the New Plymouth Rotary Club yesterday. ‘ ‘The last 100 years will be known as the age of machinery, ’ ’ said Commodore Burges-Watson. “There is a danger that the next 100 years will be known as the age of talk.” In recent years, he continued, there had been many conferences and talks. Politicians were not content with voicing opim ions in their own electorates, they must needs hold round-table conferences on every and all sorts of subjects. Many of the conferences were on the question of disarmament, said the commodore. The Rotary Club was undoubtedly in favour of disarmament, but if there was to be disarmament it must be absolutely general and must further offer a guarantee of security. How this security was to be guaranteed he did not know. In Europe numerous small States, which had been merged into larger ones, had reverted to in-dividual-nations, with a resultant dangerous growth in national feeling. The. whole of Europe had become Balkanised, and the chances of explosion were greatly increased. The safety and peace of Europe to-day rested on far more delicate ground than in the years 1905-14.

England and the British Empire must maintain its security, said Commodore Burges-Watson. Naval expenditure had already been reduced to bedrock, and economy must not be allowed to further decrease the power and efficiency of the nation’s defensive force. “If economies are to be made, let them be made in the luxuries of the country, and not in durtailing its only line of defence,” he said.