"BRITAIN’S DANGER."

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 16193, 20 March 1913, Page 6

"BRITAIN’S DANGER."

Tire announcement that Italy is going to build four additional .Dreadnoughts probably will sound like tho tolling of a dirge for Britain to the founders of the Imperial Maritime

Leaguo, which has been assuring tho nation for some years past that British preparations for war are utterly inadequate. “Britain’s Imminent Danger ” is the title of a pamphlet which has just been issued by tho Leaguo for tho purpose of showing that “ tho German navy, if it took the initiative, would now be upon an approximate equality with our own,” while in two years timo “tho German fleet will possess overwhelming superiority.” Britain will have no friends in her hour of need, if tho Leaguo is to be bolieved, and her fate will depend on the efforts of eighteen battleships to resist tho onslaught of twenty-nino. “ A partially successful night attack by German destroyers upon the main British fleet in Homo waters,” runs tho gloomy forecast, “ tho simultaneous, or almost simultaneous, despatch of a German expeditionary force, covered by tho German High Sea fleet swelled by as many vessels as they may havo been ablo secretly to mobilise, a victory at sea over a numerically inferior and therefore outmatched British fleet, followed by tho immediate march of perhaps two hundred thousand picked Gorman sroops upon London—this spectacle would supply no encouragement to the friends of -Britain to interfere on her behalf.” Now there will bo these new Italian Dreadnoughts to help Germany in what appears to ho, in tho estimation of tho Maritime League, tho easy task of subduing Britain. But tho navy list, which shows that Britain has fifty-six ships fit for tlio line-of-battlo and not moro than fifteen years old to Germany’s thirty-two, tho latter including some vessels armed with comparatively light guns, is still reassuring.