EMPIRE DEFENCE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 28 January 1939, Page 2

EMPIRE DEFENCE

GOING THROUGH TRANSITION STAGE NEED FOR CO-OPERATION I United Press Association I AUCKLAND, 27th January. The advantages gained by Mr Chamberlain’s course of action during the international crisis last September, particularly the subsequent awakening of the United States to the position of the democracies, and the need for Empire co-operation in defence were reviewed by Earl Beatty, chairman of the Navy League in England, in an address to members of the Officers’ Club. Earl Beatty’s remarks were punctuated by frequent applause. He opened with a reference to the need for strengthening all services in the Dominion. He said the whole Empire was going through a transition stage in many respects because of the fatal policy pursued for many years. “I have no doubt that in September last year you were just as concerned with the situation as we were,” he said. Distance still counted, however, and New Zealand being at the opposite end of the world, its people could not have been quite as deeply stirred as people in England. The issue of gas masks to the whole population and the digging of trenches in parks were apt to bring home not only to the services but to the mass of the people the danger in which they lived in the modern world. The problem of the defence of trade routes in the Pacific Ocean and the protection of the Dominion seemed to be altering every day. Its importance must increase day by day because it was only a matter of geographical knowledge to know that almost half the world’s population was centred round the Pacific Ocean.