IN DEFENCE OF EMPIRE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1626, 29 April 1903, Page 22

IN DEFENCE OF EMPIRE

JOHN BULL’S LITTLE NAVAL BILL. THIRTY-FOUR MILLION POUNDS REQUIRED. (From Our Special Correspondent). LONDON, March 13. Wo don’t want to light; But by Jingo if we do. Wo want more ships, Wo want more men,, And, we want more money, too! is the variant of the old refrain that sings through the brain as one devours the Government policy in regard to the Navy for the financial year (which, more or less appropriately, begins on April Ist) and which is disclosed' in the preliminary statement issued this week by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Solborno. Last, year our first lino of defence cost the nation £31,255,000 and twixt April Ist, 1903, and All Fools day, 1904, Lord S e-lb or no intimates that he will require no less than £34,475.000 in order to do justice to the Navy. A matter. of three millions two hundred and two thousand pounds increaso in the cost of defending the Empire at sea is no mere fieabite even to a wealthy country) like Great Britain, and the Naval Estimates are sure to be discussed briskly in Parliament, especially coming so soon after the exuberant financial claims of the sister service. The Army wants £34,200,000 odd! and a burden of close upon seventy millions for warlike purposes alone is a strain upon the taxpayer which can only be tolerated in years of comparative plenty. Sixteen years ago John Bull growled furiously at a seventeen million, navy estimate and since that time the expenditure on the “first line” has grown by leaps and hounds. In 1898 our Navy cost us rather more than 23millions, the following year saw an ‘increase in outlay, no less than 26£- million pounds being spent; 1901 saw the fio-urp rise to £30,875,000. W® are all oif course in favour of a strong navy, but the swift increaso shown in the ffgutes for the last ten years gives one “furiously, to think.” Apparently there is no finality to the demands upon the national purse for the nurposes of naval defence, and there is no sign yet that the colonies as a whole are preparing to bear a fair share of the burden. Moreover the present state of our Navy as a whole gives us no reason to believe that the vast sums blithely voted for the maintenance of o<~r fleets have been well spent. The number cf semi-obsolete vessels still figuring in the list and still costing huge sums per annum is large and “lame ducks” are turning up every week among the ships that are presumed to be those- we should really rely upon in event cf iimmediate hostilities. WHERE THE MONEY IS GOING. The enlarged cost of the navy during the ensuing year will be spread over all branches, but it is chiefly due to greater activity in building new ships and “reconstructing” old cues, and to the necessity for providing more officers and men. The additional personnel will be close on 5000 and the active service force will, in round numbers, be 127,000 officers and men. The sum to be spent next year on construction of new warships exceeds £10,000.000. In the current year the sum expended is £9,000,000; and a notable fact, differing from tho experience of previous years, is that all the money voted by Parliament for new ships this year has been* spent — there are no arrears. Next month the number of war vessels in course of construction will bo seventy-two! It shows a condition of activity without parallel in tho naval dockyards and private contractors’ yards. The Admiralty has accordingly decided to- allow private contractors who are building war-snips to do all tho work that is needed to make them ready for service. Hitherto they were delivered in an incomplete state to the naval dockyards, which finished them. The list of seventy-two new ships is divided as follows: —11 battleships, 10 cruisers (armed), 12 cruisers (class 2), 4 scouts, 4 cruisers (class 3), 2 sloops, 19 destroyers, 3 torpedo-boats 1 3 submarines. The submarines are apparently giving satisfaction, for we find tint in the list of ships which will actually be commenced during the ensuing financial year there are no less than ten of these under-water craft as compared with four laid down last- year. The complete list for 1904 is as follows: —3 battleships, 4 armoured cruisers, 3 small cruisers, 4 scouts, 15 destroyers, 10 submarines. An attempt is to be made to raise the standard of .service. All able seamen in future are to be trained to Have some mechanical knowledge of stoking, so as to be ablo to serve in the stokerhold. This follows naturally upon the changes in the training of officers, .whereby all officers are required to know how to handle machinery. Efforts are to be also made to: encourage greater proficiency in shooting. by granting medals carrying with them onuses. Th>t. Naval Intelligence Department is to be strengthened in several directions and a new squadron is to be formed, known as the South Atlantic Squadron, with its bases at Gibraltar and Sierra Leone. It will have charge of the west coast of Africa

which will cease to form part of the Capo station.

THE ARMY. A HOPEFUL OUTLOOK. According to a comprehensive scheme which Mr Brodrick unfolded in tho House of Commons last night there would seem to be a chance that in tiio futuro sheer merit will have more weight than petticoat favour, and that the Army will be no place for tlioso who look upon professional keenness as an unfashionable vice to bo checked by “ragging” -and mock court martials. Those who have talked of “petticoat favour” hitherto havo been more or less mocked at, but Mr Brodrick felt bound to admit, and did admit- in the frankest possible fashion that at present the service does not offer sufficient inducements to able men to devote their whole talent and energy to their chosen profession, and that the officer most popular in society lias often the bestchance of promotion, the best opportunity of securing employment outside the regiment, as on the staff of a vernor with a pleasant billet for five years, while'the work of the Army falls on others. It is time to put au end to all this, he declared emphatically, and tho Commons said “Hear, hear.” But Mr Brodrick had a. nasty knock in store for his approving audience. Nowhere more than in Parliament itself, said he', had influence been brought to bear on the War Office for the advancement of- relatives, friends and dependents. The scheme of the War Office to bring about greater efficiency is very wide in its scope. It includes the appointment of a special board to advise Sir Henry Halyard, the director of military education, and provides for the remodelling of the system of training at Sandhurst and Woolwich. Mon who enter the Army through the Militia will havo to serve four months in a line regiment, and a commission will depend on tho report of the commanding officer. To raise the educational standard a provisional commission is to be granted to university students who spend six weeks with a line regiment. They must return to the university, however, and take honours, and put in a furtlfer six weeks in the regiment. The higher the place a candidate takes the wider will be his range of selection. To infuse a new spirit of energy into the ranks of officers it is to be made clear that in future no one who does not work at his profession will be in the line of promotion. Mr Brodrick woefully admitted that- to-day after an officer lias passed his first- two years without being adversely reported on by three senior officers, there is no power to stop the bad from going up step-by-step with the good. For tiio futuro all bfik-iers will be given an annual course of field training to provide opportunity for commanders to weigh up each man for merit or criticism. The colonel and l two senior officers will classify all officers, of over one year’s service as “efficient” and “indifferent.” They may also bring to the notice of the brigadier cases of special merit and recommend for accelerated promotion. A wide knowledge of languages will be an. important consideration in this respect, and a man who gets two bad reports of his work in two years Avill be requested to send in his papers. Between promise and performance there is a great gulf fixed, but if the intention of Mr Brodrick’s scheme is honestly observed by those in power in the Army itself *we shall at all events leave behind us the- day when a full purse and highly p-laced relations enables an incompetent soldier to gain promotion over the heads of those who- have merely professional aptitude and energy to commend them. Perhaps the most promising of the foreshadowed reforms is that which affixes a stigma to incompetence by removing an inefficient of two years standing from the colours. It can hardly become “good form” even in a “crack” corps to be discharged from tho King’s service as useless. Mr Brodrick, however, has a long and hard row to hoe before the reforms he contemplates become, so to speak, visible to the naked eye. Every detail of his scheme of regeneration will have to be pressed home with vigilance and energy, for everywhere will be found deterrents and obstructions, tic lias, for instance, decreed an end to favouritism, but to make his intentions effective lie will have first of all to convert or remove the men with whose administrative methods favouritism has been intertwined, and who will be hard to persuade, no doubt, that those- acts they have deemed as harmless tokens of friendship and good nature are in reality grave treacheries to- the public interests of which they are trustees. •