WAR IN PEACE TIME

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18236, 3 November 1933, Page 3

WAR IN PEACE TIME

STATE SUBSIDIES COM. ROLLESTQN’S VIEWS SYDNEY, Get. 0. Commander Rollesloii, speaking at a military parade at the Sailors and Soldiers’ Memorial Church of St. Luke’s, do veil y said that, though we only spoke of tiro Empire being at war when guns were booming, torpedoes exploding and aircraft dropping bombs, nevertheless we were always at war. In so-called times of peace the measures of aggression took a different form, and the war was waged with money and propaganda. At the' present moment the British Empire was in greater danger of disintegration than it had ever been before, even during the years 1914 to 1918. Tho other nations envied our position and influence; they thought—-and they were quite entitled to do so—that the world would be a better place if the dominant influence in world affairs were French or Italian oh Ger-

man or American. We did not think so; we believed it was better for the world that British ideals of justice, civil and religious freedom, equity and fair play should prevail than that foreign conceptions of those same principles should control the nations and influence their Relations with each other. Continuing, Commander Rollestpn said that at present the war, which tho navy could do nothing to influence, was being waged with money, by means of which a far too successful attack was being made on our merchant service. It took the form of heavy Government subsidies and cheap loans to foreign steamship lines. He did not propose to quote figures beyond saying that those subsidies were on a colossal scale, and even Involved loans for ship-building, purposes at a rate of interest as low as Gs per cent —not 5 per cent., but a quarter of 1 per cent. Naturally, our rivals were able to launch bettereqpipped ships and to spend hdge sums on advertising, which, in the last analysis, was merely anti-British, propaganda. The steamship companies themselves did not have to earn the money to do that with; it was given to them. That form of war was regarded as perfectly legitimate, but that was no

reason why British people—he used the word "British” in its proper sense as covering all citizens of the Empire—should assist this war against the Empire by patronising foreign shipping services. The result of that could only be that the Red Ensign would gradually disappear; It was gradually disappearing, and when it had gone tho British Empire would kftve gone too. Every British citizeh who shipped bin goods or travelled personally in a non-British ship Was helping to sell the British Empire. He had been told that certain luxury liners that traded across the Pacific had hot and cold water laid on to all cabins, and that people therefore choose these ships even for the fourday trip to New Zealand. To sp<jh people he said: “Are you going to sell the British Empire for a hot-water tap? Fourteen thousand of the British merchant service lost their lives during the war. Are you going to sell their memories, too, for a hot-water tap—a luxury that many of you do not have in your own homes ashore.” He could not believe It.