The Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY, EVENING. THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1879.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 807, 12 June 1879, Page 2

The Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY, EVENING. THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1879.

Is this issue we give all the available space at command in furnishing our readers with intelligence brought , by yesterday's mail. Fears are expressed by English journals that New Zealand and tlie Australian colonies are being neglected by the English Government in not providing the necessary piotection to their mercantile marine in the event of a war with airy of the great European powers. A writer in the Home News gives an emphatic warning. ' He says :— T " To all true Englishmen, whether colonial cousins or Britishers home bom and bred, the exhaustive paper by Captain CdLbMßj of the Royal Marine Artillery, on the Naval and Military Resources of the Colonies," must give -lnucLnfdod for thought. Few people ■have had brought forcibly home to them the dangers Avhich threaten the British Empire', if it ia ever involved iu a serious and prolonged war against a coalition to which we are vulnerable. It may be that our soldiers, citizens, ami regulars might defend the integrity of English soil, whether situated between the four home seas or at widely distant points' of the whole habitable globe. But are our naval resources and the organisation of Imperial defence' such/as to secure us that naval supremacy without which our trade might be shattered beyond recovery 1 The rapid expansion of our colonies in wealth and population is, in this respect, a source of weakness rather than strength. The total value of the exports and * imports of our Australian Colonies amount now to one hundred millions, of which some forty millions are coutinually passing and i-epassing between the Antipodes and the United Kingdom. To protect these great " sea trade lines" would be a * paramount necessity in time of war. Yet no steps have beeff takeif "to discuss iiow this might best! be assured. We neglect even to provide those indispensable naval bases, at intermediate points, where our mercantile marine might run into on occasion for protection and always for coal. That the Colonies themselves little realise their responsibilities in matters of naval defence is shown by the fact that Australia, with the mercantile navy half greater than France, has no naval armament beyond one harbour defence vessel, a wooden vessel, and a handful of -volunteers The Australians are no t T 6:tbt ready enough to contribute more substantial nasistance than this to the whole scheme of Imperial defence, and it is high time, as Captain Colomb urges, that the " reciprocal duties and obligations of defence " should be denned." He suggests an Imperial Commission, on which Colonial representatives should sit, to inquire and take evidence as to the best method of securing safety to the Empire at large. It is to be hoped that the recommendation will speedily bear fruit." A war with some one, or perhaps some two or more of European States,

is considered as very probable, and we can only hope that the suggestion of Captain Colomb will meet with prompt attention. New Zealand, Avith her enormous seaboard, and her numerous ports, is so open to attack from so many weak points, that all we could do for our own defences would be very little indeed. The wealth of England is fed by its immense trade with the colonies, that it becomes the duty of tho English nation to see they are protected in case of any threatened attack from an enemy.