NAVAL DEFENCE

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 1 May 1922, Page 5

NAVAL DEFENCE

NEEDS OF AUSTRALIA

BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT

SYDNEY, April 30. Bear-Admiral Dumaresq, the departj ing commander of the Australian navy, jin an interview, commented on the | unpleasant fact that Australians failed to realise the importance of preserving a minimum of naval force which would preserve the skeleton of anything that could be called a fleet, and that must be preserved through bad times as well as good. If the total amount spent by sportloving Australians on racing and other sports was assessed it would amount to very many times the cost of a tactically efficient Royal Australian fleet. He could not help feeling that' on arrival in England he would feel ashamed of Australia on account of the attitude it had taken up over the navy. Speaking of the future, he hoped the navy would never be allowed to drop below three light cruisers and a small minimum of destroyers and submarines, because anything like a navy could not be maintained below that limit. Referring to the developments at the Genoa Conference, he urged the need of keeping up an adequate minimum naval force to secure a fair share of the world's markets and the raw materal of the world, and in ease of Australian freedom of the seas to export primary products.