ADMIRALTY DEFENDED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17327, 26 November 1919, Page 9

ADMIRALTY DEFENDED.

! NOT SO BLACK AS FAINTED. i ; MR. CHURCHILL'S IRONY. ' LONDON, Nov. 9. i Mr. Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War, in an ironical article in I the Sunday Herald, intended as a defence of the Admiralty, discusses the recent criticisms of the navy, including state- • merits made by Lord Jellicoe and Sir Percy Scott. i "These records," he says, "produce a sense of being plunged into a night-mare, , and would suggest that the most ohvious i dangers have been disregarded, that the Navy was composed of defective and , shamefully ill-supplied ships, in which the [ guns would not tire, the sights were misslug, the shells would not hurst, and the torpedoes would not run true." .vir. Churchill, lapsing into caricature, depicts the consequential defeat of the Navy, the invasion of Great Britain, and the ruin of the Allies' cause. He winds up drily:—'As a matter of fact, it did not turn out quite so badly. Despite our disgraceful neglect, incapacity, and pur. blind stupidity, the German fleet at this moment is beneath the waves in a British harbour. "The disparagement of the Navy," Mr. Churchill continues, "recalls that when the public was gloomily inclined in war time, somebody wittily predicted that the British would probably win the war, and say that they lost it, while the Germans • would lose, but say that they won. Lord Jelliooe's" detached point of view I curiously illustrates the erroneous tenI dency to distinguish between the respon- ! sibilities of the navy and the Admiralty. Both employed the same professional science, and all commanders of the fleets smd flotillas belonged to the class of officers who a few years or months prei viously served at the Admiralty, or tilled high technical posts at Whitehall. j " Nobody influenced to a greater extent 1 than Lord Jellicoe the allegedly defective I designs of the cruisers of the Invincible ! and Queen Mary classes which were sunk i at Jutland." t —"-*~" ■