NAVIES AND PROGRESS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18350, 14 September 1921, Page 4

NAVIES AND PROGRESS.

Each of the great nations which has in the past placed prime' importance on a large navy is met under present conditions with the perplexing question as to how to maintain national security and escape national bankruptcy. s “We cannot forget,” declared Mr Lloyd George when addressing the recent Conference of Prime Ministers, “that the very life of the United Kingdom, as also of Australia and New Zealand, indeed the whole Empire, has been built up on sea power, and that sea power is necessarily the basis of the whole Empire’s existence. We have, therefore, to look to the measures which our security requires;' we aim at nothing more; we

cannot possibly be satisfied with anything less.” In the Fortnightly Review for August Mr Archibald Hurd, one of the most able and consistent supporters of an effective British Navy, remarks that “tfhe nations of the world stand at the cross-roads; either the armament movement, naval, military, and aerial, must be arrested, or every State yvill be confronted with bankruptcy.” Without waste of words, the British Prime Minister and Mr Hurd express the truths on both sides of the problem, and perplexity becomes more than ever perplexing. Mr Hurd’s article deals with “The "Navy League’s Renunciation,” and is written from the viewpoint of a Big Navy advocate. “It is a sign of the disordered times in which we live,” says Mr Hurd, “that the Navy League should be advocating the abolition of battleships, battle-cruisers, destroyers, submarines, torpedo-boats, and l every type of man-of-war except ‘ lightly-armed cruisers.’” For the first time in its history as a maritime power Great Britain has had a “naval holiday,” and the organisation which for years has directed its energies to the advocacy of a big navy has renounced its faith. Very obviously the Navy League is anxious that the nation snould avoid the shoals of bankruptcy. Professor Pringle, in the, course of his illuminating address last week on the European situation, emphasised one advantage enjoyed by Germany under the Treaty of Versailles in the respect that she is prohibited from incurring expenditure on military and naval undertakings of magnitude. In effect, Germany appears to be at one and the same time relieved from expenditure on naval undertakings and protected from offensive attack Great Powers. The millions which she will save as a result will be available for expenditure upon reproductive work that must necessarily V have the effect of improving the material position of, her own population. The plain fact, therefore, appears to be that, in existing circumstances, naval preparations and social progress cannot concurrently proceed. The only bright spot in the picture is the fact that all the principal nations share the dilemma and that they must combine to solve the riddle. If the temper of British Labour can be accurately gauged by the resolution of the Trades Union Congress at Cardiff serious opposition will be offered to the comparatively small naval building programme of the Government. One responsible speaker, it is reported, demanded to know whom Britain was building against. The question can only bo answered in the case of Britain by reference to the case of the other Powers. Each Power is controlled by the current of events, and each one builds because the other builds. The immediate hope, of course, rests in the deliberations of the Disarmament Conference at Washington. Failing an agreement, the choice open to the Great Powers appears to lie between the rocks of Soylla and the whirlpool of Charybdis with a grave danger of financial wreckage.