Untitled

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15169, 7 December 1912, Page 7

BRITAIN'S GREAT BURDEN. In recently discussing the naval situation the London Daily Telegraph said " The new burden on naval construction which the amended German scheme will involve on Great Britain cannot be less than £12,000,000, ' even if Germany postpones laying the keel of one of the three extra battleships authorised, and if all three ships are begun before 1917, the charge will rise to about £14,000,000. This means that in the six years immediately ahead— and above the normal outlay on new ships of about £13,000,000 annually, or an aggregate of,' roughly, £78,000,000 of £80,000,000 sterling—the Admiralty will have to be provided with from. £12,000,000 to £14,000,000, the pressure of which will be felt mainly in the financial years of 1913-14 and onwards. There is no doubt as to these figures, except that they may err on the side of moderation. ~..'';.

" But this is only one side of the picture I and the brightest. - Germany is about to ! raise the number of her officers and men from, approximately, 60,000 to over 80,000. With these men it is <proposed to place on a war footing a new squadron consisting of eight more battleships, besides cruisers and torpedo craft." The high seas fleet is to be-raised from a strength of 17 battleships to 25, and eventually the 10 armoured cruisers associated with it will be Dreadnought cruisers of. the Invincible type, raising the armoured strength instantly ready at all times in the North Sea or Baltic to 35 Dread-

noughts. On this portion of the scheme the Imperial Government will spend most of the money for which the Reichstag must eventually be asked." , ; . Assuming the three warships mentioned by Mr. Borden will be super-Dreadnoughts the total cost would be about £6,750,000. The vote to be asked for this year is thus about the amount of the cost of one vessel.