Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, FRIDAY, NOV. 3, 1933. NAVY BUILDING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18236, 3 November 1933, Page 6

Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, FRIDAY, NOV. 3, 1933. NAVY BUILDING

The armaments race is on. There can be no doubt about it. The American shipbuilding programme has assumed widespread significance because it follows the big movement for national expansion in Japan. It lias been stated that a very superficial study of the situation in Eastern Asia and the Pacific Ocean will convince any open mind that the Japanese are not contemplating an attack upon the United States at any period within the lifetime of any warship that might be built to-day. She must be much stronger than she is to-day, much better financed, much firmer on her feet, and in effective control of a much larger section of China before, she could possibly accomplish a successful invasion of the Californian coast, although she might definitely challenge American occupation of the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands. Japan, however, would find it most difficult to hold tho.se islands. The Japanese navy, it is claimed, is not being built to attack. It is being built to protect Japan’s open and defiant exploitation of the Asiatic mainland and to maintain her hold on the naval bases she is believed to be establishing in the Caroline and Marianne Islands, which she occupies under the League’s mandate and which despite her withdrawal from tho League she does not intend ever to give up. It is being built to render impregnable her trading plans, so essential to the welfare of her huge industrial population to to enable her to establish commercial supremacy in the Far East. That Japan is expanding her navy rapidly and to the full limits of the naval agreement is beyond question. That the United States has embarked feverishly on a great shipbuilding programme, with the objective of defending American interests in the Pacific and Far East is also indisputable, and it is because of the possible development of contingencies in these theatres as well us for protection of her own commerce in any European conflict that. -Great Britain, after leading the way. in naval disarmament, has been compelled to seek the restoration of her Navy. Tho attitude of Great Britain in regard to naval strength Is quite logical and well known. Her naval forces reduced to below the minimum the Admiralty has fixed as a safety point, she regards with disappoint-, mont the fact that the other naval Powers have not followed her example in the path of naval reduction as a practical move towards ultimate disarmament. The Admiralty is now convinced that it must build up to the fullest strength permitted under the London Naval Treaty and is laying its plans- accordingly. ‘‘We have no right,” declared Lord Beatty in his Trafalgar Day speech, ‘‘to continue to run the terrible risk of recent years.” Britain, ho declared, had carried out disarmament to such an extent that her naval strength was insufficient to make her an attractive ally or to play the part of a great Power, and thereby help to promote the restoration of international confidence, and to guarantee that her merchant ships would have sate passages on the high seas. With the hope that something would be achieved by the Disarmament Conference, British Governments have considered retrenchment of naval expenditure a fair risk, but witli the obvious failure' attending that conference there was no other course for Britain to pursue than to restore the strength of her forces and to replace large numbers of ageing ships. It was reported last week that the Cabinet had accepted proposals submitted by the Admiralty. Tho nature of these proposals will probably not be officially disclosed until Parliament meets this month for its autumn session, but Mr. Hector Bywater, the well informed correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, has given a forecast of flic essential features of the plan. The omissions of recent years, he states, are to be made up; of the 25 new cruisers now to be demanded six represent ships which ought to have been built- or begun from 3930 onwards, and the other .19 will do no more than cover cruisers wanted for replacement by the end of 1935. Some of these must be late in arrival. It is expected that the programme wifi require the ordering ol six of these ships each year for the next, four years. The annual quoin of destroyers will have to bo irom L* to IS a year. The retrenchment of personnel in recent years is at last to be revcrsW, and Mr. Bvwater expects immediate provision for an increase of 10,000 men. Lord Beatty declared that the reduction of the personnel by 12,000 .which had been effected in recent years had left Britain with insufficient men to man her ships. Her personnel at present stands at 90,300, while America’s is 307,000, and Japan’s exceeds 88,000. Britain also requires large stocks of reserve material and to defend her bases against attacks by modern aircraft, submarines and heavy ships. “It is difficult to imagine,” he said, “that they could be properly safeguarded on the pittance allowed the Navy.” Tho replacement.programme,

it is understood, is to cover a number of years. It will be recalled that the last replacement programme, submitted in 1925, was virtually eliminated in a series of “peace gestures.”' The result is that to-day Britain has a considerable number of worn out ships. At tho end of last year she had 51 cruisers on the effective list, of which eight were over the age limit of US years. During the present year six more cruisers are due to be scappcd, next year seven, and the year after six. To replace this scrapping would require a programme of six new cruisers each year for several year; and unless that rate is undertaken the British Navy will fall under the pitifully meagre minimum of 50 which tho Admiralty was induced to accept in 1930,' although it had previously sot. 70 as the irreducible safety minimum. When it is borne in mind that since 1914, according to the First Lord of the Admiralty, whose figures are official from all the countries concerned, the British fleet, lias declined 47 per cent, while the United States’ Hoot has increased by 29 per cent., the Japanese by 37 per cent and the Italian by 20 per cent, and that the British naval man-power during the same period has decreased by 35 per cent, while the American has increased by (JO per cent, the Japanese by 74 per cent, and the Italian by -'*s pci cent, it is not difficult to see why the British Admiralty is engaged in revising its naval plans for the future, whilst assuredly building against nobody but only for security—security which is as vital to the population of its far-flung Empire ns is the security demanded so persistently by France.