NAVAL DEFENCE.

Northern Advocate, 28 August 1913, Page 4

NAVAL DEFENCE.

Apparently we must continue to wait for a comprehensible statement of Ministerial policy respecting naval defence, but sufficient has now been said tiy members of the Government to indicate what this will be. Both Mr Allen and Mr Massey, speaking in the House last night, made it practically clear that their programme will involve a recasting of /the present arrangements and proposals for embarking upon a local navy of some, as yet, undefined size. That it must be on the minor scale is, of course, obvious. That such a navy will not be of the slightest strategical value or in any way useful either to the country or to the Empire is equally apparent. We view the contemplated action of the Government in this matter with grave disfavour and believe that this will be the view taken by the majority of the peopJe in the Dommi >n, already growing restive at the annual expenditure the State has to meet in maintaining the new system of internal defence. What is this '.'local navy" for? If it is to defend the Dominion against the warships of some other Power then it will be reasonable to ask what Power the authors of the scheme have in mind. Is it conceivable that two or three tinpot vessels are going to stand between the hostile designs of any great warlike nation and a fleet costing twenty or thirty millions annually? Yet if this is not so wlu-.t practical justification will exist for embarking on a programme such as has now been indicated as likely to be put forward"' Tr-e prii.ciples upon which the maritime interests of a maritime Empire must be defended are fixed and permanent. They are the same now as in the days of Nelson, and were clearly expressed by the Admiralty as recently as 1909.

"If" it was then laid down "the problem of Imperial naval defence be considered as a problem of naval strategy it will be found that the greatest strength for a given expenditure is obtained by the maintenance of a single navy with the concomitant unity of training and unity of command. In furtherance then of the simple strategical ideal the maximum of power can be obtained if all parts of the Empire contribute according to their needs and resources to the maintenance of the British Navy.' , This scund doctrine we are to be asked to no longer accept—to spend money, badly needed in a score of directions, to create something that will have no more influence on the course of events in the case of a naval war than the navy of Ecuador.