BRITISH SECURITY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20290, 24 December 1927, Page 21

BRITISH SECURITY.

AN AMERICAN OPINION. “ In British eyes, the American demand for equality at sea strikes at the very root of British power, as well a? security, in the world. If we have the ships to ‘ wage neutrality,’ to use Mr Wilson’s phrase, then Britain is relatively helpless in the face of a Continental opponent with a large land force," writes Mr Frank H. fjimonds in the American Review of Reviews. “We become in a very denfiito sense the champions of a form of international law which is fata! to all British traditional power and even security. "There is the root of the whole naval dispute between the British and ourselves On that day on which we actually attain ren] equality on the blue water, we and not the British will be in a position to determine the course of any new world conflict. Our fleet will not be used against the British, but the fact of our Host in being will utterly transform the whole character of British action. It may even bo that this fact will force them to fall back upon the Cotmontal system of a large standing army. “ At bottom, the whole British feeling rests upon the belief that we do not need a navy and they do, and that our demand for a navy equal to theirs carries with it the most serious of menaces to them. And m that they are perfectly right. The onlv difficulty lies in the fact that the situation is 'without permanent remedy. We have become richer, our resources arc vastly greater. Our domestic problems, political and social, are. insignificant 0y contrast with theirs, and we have no imperial problems comparable with India and Egypt. “Once we have our equal navy the. British see that if a European war should break and they were involved, their existence would depend upon our altitude toward maritime law. And all our material interests would obviously dictate that we I should defend every detail of our rights to trade abroad, even when those riirht- themI selves inpcrllled British security Or ev#n existence.”