CHAOTIC POSITION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18065, 17 April 1933, Page 2

CHAOTIC POSITION

GREAT BRITAIN DISARMED “I think I am safe in saying that at no time (luring the last 50 years, except in the Great War, has Europe been in a more chaotic position than to-day,” declared Mr J. J. Doug,all, president of the Canterbury branch of the Navy League, at the annual meeting, and he went on to say that Great Britain hnd disarmed to a perilous degree.

lie said that Germany was following the policy of Bismarck and the exKaiser, and had shown that it was not going to bo satisfied with the Treaty of Versailles. Throughout the British Empire there was a great cry for disarmament, and Mr Ramsay MacDonald was tile greatest advocate of disarmament in the world. Great Britain was the only country that had disarmed, and she had done «o to an alarming extent. France and Italy were buliding up navies, and Germany was producing “pocket” battleships against which no British cruiser would have a possible chance of success. Great Britain’s cruiser strength was 52. but eight ships were obsolete, and in two years 20 more would be in the same condition, so that there would not be many cruisers left should war break out. The British Array was in the same condition. If war occurred Great Britain would not be able to send away an expeditionary force. There was some question in New Zealand whether the Navy League should interest itself in the Mercantile Marine, he "went on. The Mercantile Marine, however, was the essence of British power. British shipping was iri a parlous condition at present, due largely to the subsidies being paid by the United. States and France, and even impecunious Greece.