IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9460, 23 June 1902, Page 3

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

DEBATE ON THE NAVY.

STRONG SPEECH BY LORD

BERBSFORD

Eleotrio Telegraph -Copyright United Press Association.

LONDON, June 21,

In the Naval debate in the House of Commons "on the Admiralty estimates, Lord Charles Beresford said the Government were doing their utmost, to make the Mediterranean fleet one-quarter stronger than in 1901. The torpedocatchers had been doubled, while the stores were 80 per cent, better. The Admiralty system of administration was rotten. The reserve amounted to 20,000, instead of 80,000 possessed by one of Great Britain's enemies. The engineroom departments wene a thousand men short. They were without trained stokers. The boilers were worse, than useless. Nobody at the Board of Admiralty, he said, was directly responsible for the inefficiency. One Government had . been ejected because there was no cordite. Later on it had been discovei-ed that there were no guns, and in 1901 they were short of coal. What was wanted was some individual or department to -be responsible for the departments in detail, and to submit the demands to those responsible in Parliament. A vigorous debate followed. Sir H. A. Campbell-Bannerman said he did not believe that the First. Lord of the Admiralty ever disregarded the views of the First Sea Lord. Sir Charles Dilke. complained of vacillation. He instanced the case of Weihaewei and the School of Naval Strategy' at Colombo. He hoped that the colonies would be. reminded of their obligations. Mr E. Robertson recommended a Parliamentary Committee of General Control. Mr Forster said that t!he supply of coal was extended proportionately to the means of storing, and was not the result of agitation. Similarly, as regai'ds the fleet, ships were sent because they were completed. All the fleets had been strengthened. The Intelligence Department of the Navy had been strengthened. It Would be disastrous to- refer scientific details to a Parliamentary Committee. He recognised the need of some reinforcement of the intellectual equipment which might direct the enormous forces of the Empire, and which, would also value, even in their present not wholly developed form, the intelligence departments of both of the services, but there were questions outside the purview of either of those bodies acting independently." There was room for a greater amount of preparation in the advance. Regarding the defence of tile Empire, he was not sanguine of the possibility of improving it in a year, or even a quinquennium or decade, to an organisation enabling it to do all that was desirable. The present Board was aware of the deficiencies of the Navy, and alert to remedying them. The debate was adjourned. The lilies states that Mr FbrsteTs speech is probably the most important declaration of a higher policy of defence since the Duke of Devonshire's announcement that the Government and Admiralty had accepted sea supremacy as the basis of Imperial defence. What was wanted was the institution of an organ of executive government to settle the problem steadily as a whole, namely, a special department superior to the Admiralty and War Office. Taking the widest purview of the declaration, it has committed the Government and Admiralty to the one policy, to place, defence on a national and intelligible basis.