NAVAL DEFENCE

Northern Advocate, 28 August 1913, Page 5

NAVAL DEFENCE

GOVERNMENT POLICY INDICATED

PROPOSALS FOR A LOCAL FLEET.

"DEFENCE AND AGGRESSION."

•(Prom Our Special Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, Aug. 28.

It is quite evident from a statefjinent made by the Minister for Defence to-night, that tie Government •contemplate proposing an important change from the previously accepted naval arrangements. One part of the new scheme will be a locally managed fleet for defence purposes patroling New Zealand waters but subject to Admiralty control for Imperial defence. Mr Allen, replying to Sir Joseph yard's demand for information, referred to the Dreadnought as essentially intended for aggressive purposes. Our policy, continued the Minister, is to protect our own shores and our trade routes. It is an open question and I have received hints of it when I was in the Mother Country that the battleship is not the last word to be said in regard to naval defence. We would be mad—realising that our policy is not so much one of aggression as of protection —to launch out into expensive machines of naval warfare. This would be to close our eyes to the development of the next few years. Is it not conceivable that there is a naval machine yet to be produced which is less costly than a battleship which will serve our purpose, that of protecting our apd sea routes even from great battleships? The Minister heightened the impression that the Government favours a local fleet unit by dealing fully with what he considered Sir Joseph Ward's "mietaken idea" as to the real meaning of the Australian local navy.

The Prime Minister later gave his assurance "in order to allay any uneasiness respecting a possible alliance with Australia for naval defence purposes" that there was no intention whatever to join Australia in her local navy. Neither, he declared, was it intended to enter upon a building programme (Hear, hear). All he wished to impress upon members was the ultimate necessity of establishing a British fleet in the Pacific sufficiently strong to hold its own with any hostile fleet, white or yellow, that might come along.