THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1903. THE NAVY LEAGUE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12452, 23 December 1903, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1903. THE NAVY LEAGUE.

It is to be anticipated that the visit to Auckland and other New Zealand centres of Mr. H. E. Wyatt, the envoy of the Navy League, will organise into an effective force the strong and general sympathy felt in this colony with everything that assists the naval power of the Empire. While We are not as conversant as we should be with the details of the naval establishment, we are generally cognisant of the manner in which we depend for security upon the naval supremacy of Britain, and in an emergency -Would unquestionably make any effort or sacrifice within our means to assist in maintaining it. The difficulty has been that while we make a small contribution to what is known as the Australasian Squadron,' we do not appear to bear our proportionate share of the cost of the Royal Navy, so that we. are debarred from that untrammelled criticism of naval matters which is only possible to those who pay for them. In reference to this phase of the question, it is only fair to ourselves to point out that while we certainly ought to do more than we do in the way of financial assistance, it is not equitable to assume that our fair share is to be judged either by our population or by our nominal carrying trade. As the centre of Empire, the storehouse of Imperial wealth, the part of the Empire that depends -for its existence upon the keeping of the seas, the United Kingdom ought to bear a larger proportion of naval expenditures than the outlying : colonies, comparatively poor and rather traded with than trading. This point ought to' be clearly realised, so that misunderstandings may be avoided and a common Imperial conception arrived at. . That such a common conception, universally held and heartily worked for, would be vastly to our Imperial advantage, as well as to the local benefit of every part of the Empire, cannot be doubted. The fact that the Navy League is striving to bring it into practical existence is complete justification for the visit of Mr. Wyatt and all-sufficient inducement for our hearty support to his mission.

Mr. Wyatt traces, in another col-! umn of this morning's New Zealand Herald, the historical basis of the Navy League and the bearing which the movement has upon the colonial situation. With all that he says and •with much that he seems to infer, we can unreservedly agree. Particularly we can endorse his arguments for the encouragement and the training of the British seaman. We may feel chary of expressing too strong an opinion upon the necessity for greatly increasing the fleet, when the cost of such increase must fall at present upon the British taxpayer. But we have no hesitation whatever in insisting that our naval supremacy depends just as much upon having men to fight our Imperial warships as upon having ships for our men to fight in. In a statement which we have recently received from the headquarters of the League it is shown that we are not maintaining the naval maxim that Britain should be able to meet the navies of any two countries in combination, with " a considerable margin of reserve.'' It is further pointed out that great as has been the increase ■. in Imperial naval expenditures during the past thirteen years, it has not kept pace with the increasing expenditures of Russia, Germany and America, and that in allotting as much money to the army as to the navy a great mistake is made by a country which depends essentially upon its sea-arm. These points, together with the protest against the starving of the Naval Intelligence Department—whicl* has to do for £15,000 annually work which the Germar Army is allowed £250,000 for doing— the question whether the smokeless coal only found in Britain should be allowed to go into inimica l stokeholes, are evidently sound, and if our colonial sympathy and support can hel}. in the work of progress and reform it is freely at the service of the Navy League. But what is the use of spending money and building ships unless we have the seamen 1 Were our Imperial fleet equal to those of every other European nation combined it would be vain unless we could man it with British fighting men.

This is a phase of the naval question to which Mr. "Wyatt wisely gives prominence ip his colonial tour. Something is already being done in this direction under the new naval arrangements, and we shall be greatly indebted to him for any further suggestions which he can throw out and which may guide the colonies in their willingness to do all that lies in then power. We understand that European nations always make the nationality of crews a feature in subsidy agreements with theii mercantile marines, and that by this, and by the conscription of seamen to theii navies, they have a proportionately greater reserve of seamen to draw upon than has the United Kingdom. That we ought to have as fine and strong a fleet as is required for any probable emergencies goes without saying, but we ought much more to have as fine and strong a body of trained seamen with " a margin of reserve" which extends to every man who sails under the Brit-

ish flag to British ports.- -J* ■ Tyg cannot overlook the fact that/n the maritime history of our race /e have over and over again fought /hd won with inferior Ships, but hare never fought and won with inferior and incapable crews. "We certainly cannot depend upon Lascars and' foreigners to keep the seas for us/against our enemies, even if we were willing to do so. We must find oar o*n seamen from our own people, ind cannot set about doing so too soon or in too drastic a fashion.•■■ A- hundred years ago we upheld the Royal Navy by dragging British seamen from the mercantile marine; it would seem from Mr. Wyatfc'a figures and from the consensus of statistics that we must now uphold the Royal Navy by putting foreign and alien seamen out of our British ships and putting Britishers back into them. This can be done in the colonies as much as in the United Kingdom, and we are certainly more able to act in this direction than in the making of any really adequate financial contribution to Imperial naval defence.