AUSTRALIAN NAVAL DEFENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13262, 22 August 1906, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN NAVAL DEFENCE.

COMMENTS OF THE TIMES.

By Telegraph.—Presß Association.—

London, August. '20. The Times, in a loading article on the report of the Committee of Imperial Defence relative to the Australian defences, says the Earl of Selborne when First Lord of the Admiralty told the Colonial Conference that the solitary task of the Imperial fleet was to seek the enemy's ships wherever they were to be found and destroy them. Australian feeling with regard to foreign bases and preparations ignores the fact that a base does not menace anything beyond the range of its own guns unless a mobile naval force is stationed there, in which case it becomes the British fleet's solitary task to seek and destroy that force.

Nevertheless the Times considers that the laudable aspiration of the Australians to participate in the defence of their own country both by land and sea is deserving of nothing but encouragement from the Mother Country. " The real problem is to yield whatever can be conceded without weakening the panoply of Imperial defence and to eschew bickerings." An advance towards that problem should be made at the Colonial Conference, which will at least give the Australian delegates an opportunity of hearing and perhaps appreciating more sympathetically the views of the Committee of Imperial Defence.