POWER OF THE NAVY

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1147, 22 October 1924, Page 5

POWER OF THE NAVY

"REDUCTION WOULD BE MADNES'S." OPINION OF LONDON TIMES. [By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.] Received October 22, 9.35 a.m. LONDON, (let. 21. In a lender the Times .suys: “Even from fho purely British and Imperial viewpoint tin power of the navy has been brought down perilously near the margin of satiety, end any further reduction would he .suicidal madness. The determination ol the country’s naval ttrengtli is, or should be, a question out.iide the .region of party polities, but the trouble is that the Labour thirty and many Liberals, in their consuming zeal for universal peace anil disarmament blind tliemselvee to the reality of the danger, Mr MacDonald and bis party declined to carry out the full programme of liuval construction (modest it« it was) which their predecessors regarded as the minimum essential for safety. There are, no doubt, among the more temperately minded members of the Labour Party muny who are alive to the vital necessity for maintaining: the navy at the full strength permitted by the Washington agreement, but here, us risen bore, the pariv as a whole has shown that its policy is dictated by fear of its extremists, and that it cannot be trusted to lake the necessary precautions for the safety of the country, and supply of its food, and the security of its imperial communications.”—Times.