ANOTHER NAVAL POLICY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16508, 25 March 1914, Page 8

ANOTHER NAVAL POLICY.

Another naval policy for the Empire is briefly suggested in a cable message we publish this morning, its author being an anonymous person described as "a writer in tho 'Times.'" According to this authority the Admiralty still clings to tho hope that the overseas dominions will provide battleships for the creation of a sort of patrol fleet for the Empire. This implies that neither the writer nor the Admiralty knows what is happening in New Zealand, to say nothing of what is happening in Australia, and that Mr Massey's Government has been neglecting tho advertising side of its business. Here is a correspondent of a great London newspaper unaware that New Zealand is building a fleet for itself and that for a year or two to come it will have no money to spare for contributions to the Imperial Navy. Perhaps Mr Massey's emphatic warning to Mr Churchill, that New Zealanders will not be satisfied to be protected by Japanese ships and Japanese seamen, has been misunderstood by the Admiralty or the writer in the " Times," and one or the other may have interpreted it to mean that New Zealand is going to give another battleship to the Empire. It is a pity that we should bo misunderstood in this fashion and that the Mother Country should not know that henceforth we are going to build a Bristol cruiser and look after our own defence. Still, if the Admiralty, in spite of the fact that an Australian fleet is already in being, is looking to tho Commonwealth to provide a battleship for a patrol squadron, it i-; hardly to be expected that notice will be taken of New Zealand's lone Bristol cruiser. It would be charitable, considering all things, to assume that what the writer in the "Times" is thinking of is not a new policy of defence for the whole Empire, but simply the old policy for the North Atlantic, and that tho only dominion concerning whoso intentions there is any real doubt is Canada. Until the Canadian policy is definitely laid down the Admiralty is not likely to summon another Imperial Defence Conference, and of course the domestic troubles of the Mother Country will have to bo overcome before the Government can be expected to give its attention to problems that are not, from its point of view, particularly urgent.