NAVAL MAN-POWER

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVII, Issue 4473, 21 November 1933, Page 6

NAVAL MAN-POWER

TO BE RAISED BY THOUSANDS. A surprise decision to increase the Navy’s strength by thousands of men will be announced by Sir Bolton Eyres Monsell, First Lord of the Admiralty when he presented the Navy Estimates to the House of Commons. This significant move, the Sunday Chronicle learns, is the direct result of the anxiety felt in official quarters for some time that the Navy’s strength has been allowed to get dangerously low. During the last three years alone the personnel has been reduced by 11,000 men, and to-day the strength is only 90,000 compared with 145,000 in 1914. In those days our Navy was easily the biggest in the world, the reason given being that we had the biggest length of trade routes and the most extensive territory to defend. To-day, though the same conditions exist, that big lead has disappeared. The United States has 90,000 men i'n the Navy and a Marine Corps of 17,000. More than we have. Japan has 90,000 active members of the fleet, and a vast trained reserve, due to the fact that every Japanese man has to serve a conscript period. Japan, therefore, also has more men than we have. France has 60,000 active men in the fleet, and again it has a large body of trained reservists as a result of its conscript system. Italy has 53,000 sailors. In view of the improved state of the national finances more money will be allocated to the navy in the coming year, and efficiency instead of money saving will be put first. Another part of the First Lord’s scheme will aim at increasing the strength of the Royal Naval Reserve.