INDISPENSABLE NAVY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 238, 5 September 1935, Page 9

INDISPENSABLE NAVY.

BULWARK OF EMPIRE. PROTECTION OF TRADE ROUTES. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Sept. 4. “An air force can never displace the sea-borne forces of the Navy in the protection of the great ocean trade routes of the Empire. This is a most important point, for there are many who would lead us to believe that the Air Force has displaced tlie Navy,” said Commodore the Hon. E. R. Drummond, officer commanding the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, in an address at the annual meeting tc-night of the Auckland branch of the Navy League. “The truth is that both are essential to our safety,” the commodore added. They have separate functions. To compare their relative importance is to draw an invidious distinction. By fighting ships only can protection be afforded to the merchant ships which carry our commerce the length and breadth of the Empire. The Navy League has always realised this, and it lias worked hard to educate the public to the need of maintaining a suitable naval strength.” The League of Nations was an ideal, the commodore continued. It was doing wonderful work, but to maintain peace it must have some threat of force behind it to back it up. Unfortunately, it had not now got it. The motto, “If you want peace prepare for war,” held good in the present day. That the world situation was about as serious as it could he was realised by everybody. At the moment Italv was the storm centre, but Japan, with her claim to naval parity and activities' in the Far East, and Germany, who was rearming and would shortly he asking for the return of her pre-war colonies, all caused great concern to the British Empire. , “We are faced with a situation with which at present we have not the strength to cope,” the speaker added. As always after a great war the cry was for peace. Great Britain, to prove her sincerity, had disarmed and set an example which, unfortunately, other nations had only discussed and did not wholeheartedly follow, with the result that we found ourselves in this most serious situation.

In regard to the air, the Government was taking stops to produce adequate forces, and this important arm was being brought up to a suitable standard of strength. The need for an adequate air force to protect London and other great cities was at once apparent, but the fact that unless Great Britain had an adequate navy the pnl>lic would not get their food was more difficult to bring home.