HUMILIATING POSITION

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8653, 11 February 1914, Page 6

HUMILIATING POSITION

It must be humiliating to patriotic New Zealanders to se* from this morning’s cable messages what a halting tone of indecision and negation our High Commissioner was compelled to adopt at a meeting of representative financial and business men and .otheis held at the Guildhall to back up the British Government in its measures for the supremacy of the navy. Not that the Hon. T. Mackenzie is in any way to Marne. He is not responsible for the situation in which he was placed M the Government that lie serves. The High Commissioner was able to contribute to the discussion nothing but weak platitudes and vague promises because his Government has unfortunately reversed the policy that had established this Dominion as foremost among the Empire’s countries in its determination to help keep the flag dominant in the ocean. As a matter of fact, if the decision of Parliament arrived at during the last session is to stand, wo have severed our old associations with the Admiralty! We have stopped our subsidy to the British navy. We have cut adrift from real national unity in the important sphere of naval defence, and decided to have a useless, toy, tinpot navy of our own, The Hon. James Allen —Colonel Allen, if you please—is our prospective Admiral of the Fleet, and we shall have one cruiser, one warship of third-rats size, speed, armament and calibre, to. protect our sea-borne commerce from Auckland to Vancouver, from Wellington to San Francisco and Calcutta, from all our ports to tljosc of all out customers the world oyer. And this wonderful solitary cruiser will, in ad dition, defend our shores against for. eign attack, help Australia' in time of need, and be at all times ready to pro ceed instanter to the Atlantic or the North Sea should the Mother Countrj be an danger! Of course it was use loss for Mr Mackenzie to submit this burlesque to a meeting of intelligent men in London who were considering real problems and practical measures; and so it is that all he could do was to undertake in the most indefinite terms imaginable that New Zealand was prepared to do her share, though she was “not yet competent to do all that was necessary for the safety in transport of her produce.” Of course she is not, and cannot possibly be competent for generations to come. New Zealand relics absolutely, and will so rely notwithstanding Colop el-Admiral Allen and his “fleet,” upon, the strength of the British navy'. And from that navy we hare withdrawn our support. That is the unhappy circumstance that placed our High Commissioner, and through him New Zealand, in such a humiliating—and novel—position at the London meeting. The pity of it, for New Zealand, which has given a battleship to the Empire!