GERMANY'S SHIPBUILDING PROGRAMME.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12493, 20 March 1909, Page 3

GERMANY'S SHIPBUILDING PROGRAMME.

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LORD ROSEBERY'S VIEWS."

[Press Association— Ccttbight.]

London, March 18. - \ The "Daily News" and the "Manchester Guardian" declare that Admiral von Tirpitz's denial of German naval expansion disposes of all conjectures whereon the Navy Estimates debate was based, though Mr Frederic Harrison, leader of the Positivists, who opposes all forms of militarism, warmly supports- in "The Times" every possible precaution on sea or land against- Germany. • In the House of Commons. Mr McKenna, First Lord of the Admiralty, replying to a question, admitted that there was no plant for making gun mountings at Woolwich. He .added that Britain had 17 shipbuilding slips and two others capable for adoption for warlike purposes. Lord Rosebery, in a letter to "The Times," declares that while the Naval programme announcement is the most critical to the Navy, in a sense that it secures the Navy, because the nation will vote all that is posible directly it realises that the Navy's predominance is threatened. But the impemousness of the country to invasion being" relegated to the region of doubt -raises the problem whether the Territorial Army is sufficient for home defence.