DEFENCE OF AUSTRALIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19199, 16 June 1924, Page 7

DEFENCE OF AUSTRALIA

PRESSING NAVAL PROBLEM. LONDON, May 31. No more pressing problem confronts the people of the Commonwealth than that of naval defence, says the Times, in an editorial. While the visit of the Special Service Squadron happily has resulted in, stimulating interest in this question, there is at the same time a distinct tendency to turn from the great aim of a common policy within the Empire and to concentrate upon the defence of Australia itself. From an Imperial point o t view this may be regrettable, but it is extremely natural, in view of the abandonment of Singapore as a naval base. The newspaper emphasises the ' poinl that Australia counted on the establishment of this base when she acquiesced ir the decisions of the Washington Disarmament Conference. These decisions, it ii remarked, lose all proportion to a peopb who see to the qorthward the great bases of Japan, and to the eastward the dockyards of Pearl Harbour, belonging to fcha United States, yet “look in vain for a first-class British base within practical distance of their thinly-populated shores. ‘