THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 1934 SIGNIFICANCE OF SINGAPORE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21708, 25 January 1934, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 1934 SIGNIFICANCE OF SINGAPORE

The Singapore naval base is once more a theme of pacifist comment, prone to treat every brass button as a declaration of war. A conference of admirals is in progress thereBritish admirals, including representatives of Australian and New Zealand units. Some fortification work is in progress. Therefore, enjoying the form of logical exercise that begins with choice of a cherished conclusion and proceeds to find excuses for proclaiming it, the pacifists scent a fresh threat to world peace. A little honest inquiry would discover that the conference is a routine refresher course in ordinary duty and the work a minimum of attention to a rather defenceless focus of defensive strategy. By this time of day, after successive British Governments, Labour's among them, have done more or less to make the position clear, with the definite endorsement of every Power interested, the misrepresentation is a trifle tiresome. No wonder American purveyors of unpleasant suspicions have been rebuked by a prominent American ]ournal. Such uncurbed accusations are the sort of thing that makes war, and deserve rebuff in the interests of peace. In the story of the base is effective answer to every whisper of evil. For more than fifty years there has been a British naval base at Singapore. It was lopg a poor affair, how poor can be gauged from recommendations in 1882 that took preliminary shape in 1885 in provisions for strengthening its equipment, and afterwards, but before the war, for installing 9.2 in. guns to resist attack by armoured cruisers. Had the concentration of the Fleet in the North Sea not been necessary in 1914-18, this programme would have been carried out; as it was the scheme had to wait. It was tardily pursued. In May of 1923 a plan to expend £11,000,000 in development of facilities—graving dock for capital ships, possibly a floating dock as well, workshops, stores of reserve ammunition —was propounded. The amount was reduced to £9,500,000 before the plan was submitted to Parliament. The necessity for oil-fuel tanks was dealt with in conjunction with oil-storage requirements at other bases. To spread the outlay over ten years was purposed. Thus there was neither a lavish hand nor a hasty one in the project. For an alleged threat it was strangely timid and sluggish. Changes in British Ministries saw alterations of pace in constructing an efficient repair and docking base —Labour at first was numbered with the critics —but nonb called an actual halt. The defensive purpose was soon approved by all parties, although the mistaken murmurings of pacifists have had, occasionally, eminent' utterance. In general, the development of the base has been regarded an an integral part of the necessity, as expressed by the Imperial Conference of 1923, "to provide for the adequate defence of the territories and trade of the several countries comprising the British Empire." That conference enunciated' among its "guiding principles" of defence the provision of naval bases and facilities for repair and fuel in order to ensure the mobility of the Navy. In particular, it noted "the deep interest of the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, and India, in the provision of a naval base at Singapore, as essential for ensuring the mobility necessary to provide for the security of the territories and trade of the Empire in Eastern waters." The explicit purpose has not gone beyond that, nor can any other be reasonably inferred. Overdue as an imperative safeguard of national communications east of Suez and in the Pacific, the adequate development of this base is the filling of what a famous traveller and geographer, Dr. Vaughan Cornish, once called "the one great remediable gap" in those communications. Our national handling of problems of territory and its use must deal in terms oceans, not continents, and unless the sea highways be effectively patrolled by our own Fleet, whenever occasion arises, we live by the uncertain sufferance of foreign Powers. Singapore is, in Dr. Cornish's phrase, "the British Navy's new eastern capital." Circumstances have made it inevitably so. To guard and equip this capital is a duty to ourselves. And the doing of this is no menace to other peoples. Lord Balfour, when urging that niggardly expenditure on Singapore was not economy but really a neglect to ensure that the money otherwise spent on the Navy was not poured out in vain, argued that, if a British naval forced based there was a menace to Japan, then the Japanese fleet in its home waters was a menace to every country within a like radius from them. His argument has never been answered. Japanese spokesmen have emphatically said that they do not regard the base as a menace. At the Washington Conference, when ratios

of capital ships wore decided, there was clear agreement on the British right to develop this base, although America was persuaded to relinquish the proposed fortification of Guam and the Philippines. Mr. Asquith, while sharing some opinions of critics in 1923, stated in the Commons that he did not think the development of Singapore a breach of the Washington Treaty, which "defined geographically the limits within which the self-denying ordinance as to the establishment of naval bases was to be carried out." On all hands the evidence for the right and the duty to make the base thoroughly efficient is incontestably strong, and it is well that need to pursue this policy is being given continued attention.