The Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, MAY 25, 1936 BRITAIN’S DEFENCE SCHEME

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 25 May 1936, Page 4

The Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, MAY 25, 1936 BRITAIN’S DEFENCE SCHEME

THE speech recently made in uie House of Commons by Sir Thomas Inskip, Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, is important because it shows that the British Government is fully alive to the necessity for Great Britain to be prepared to meet any situation which may emerge from the dangerously unsettled state of Europe. It is evident from the Minister’s speech that the British Government is concerned because of the urgent necessity there is to remedy “the vulnerability of battleships,” to reorganise the Fleet Air arm, and to provide for adequate war-time food supplies and in addition to secure “an adequate response from tbp industrial system to the needs of the defence services.” But Sir Thomas Inskip said that the Government’s attention was particularly directed “to the requirements of Air Force expansion to overtake accumulated deficiencies of many years in a short period.” It is clear from these statements that the British Government has given up all hope of disarmament in Europe, and is preparing a system of defence which shall protect England and the British Isles from the anticipated horrors of aggression, and perhaps of invasion. It is plain that the Commons approved of the steps which the Government proposed to take for the defence of the realm, though the Opposition and Government supporters differed as to the actual reasons which prompted the Defence Minister’s speech. The most interesting part of the debate, so far as the people of this and other Dominions are concerned, was the speech of Lieut.-Commander Fletcher, a Labour member, who urged that the Premiers of the Dominions should be summoned to England immediately “to settle the future foreign policy of the Commonwealth (of British Nations) and the defence plans to fulfil that policy,” and he added that “the world would not be slow to appreciate all it implied.” The Dominions do not wish to be mixed up in

Europe's quarrels. Their wish is to be implicated as little as possible in the differences of the European nations, and there is no doubt that when the next Imperial Conference takes place (whether it be “immediately” or on the due date, next year) the representatives of the Dominions will

strongly advise that the British Government should separate itself from all those entanglements which may

possibly embroil it in the next European war. The British Empire is so great and its affairs are so important lhat they require Britain's full attention. if they are to flourish and prosper to the extent which is desirable; and it is obvious that the more the attention of the British Government and people is directed to the affairs of the European Continent, the less is likely to be the attention which they can give to the affairs of the vast Empire, for whose welfare they are so largely responsible.