THE COLONIST. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1913. ARMED MERCHANTMEN.

Colonist, Volume LV, Issue 13755, 21 June 1913, Page 4

THE COLONIST. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1913. ARMED MERCHANTMEN.

In a few weeks the Thermistocles, the first Australian passenger liner equipped with armament in pursuance of the policy recently announced by the First Lord of the Admiralty, will reach the Southern Hemisphere. The adoption of the policy of arming vessels of the mercantile- marine marks a new and interesting feature of the defence of trade routes, and while Mr Churchill's decision is generally approved, it raises many questions which are being anxiously discussed at Home. The armament with which the liners are being equipped is very light, consisting of two guns of small calibre, and would obviously bo capable of effective use only against hostile merchantmen similarly provided. This is, in fact, the service for which the equipment is intended, and the step i 3 a precautionary measure against a very probable method of harassing British trade in tho event of an outbreak of war. It has been suggested that the Admiralty's , practice would necessitate a searching inquiry into the ownership of ships flying the British flag, it being argued that their nationality must be established without a shadow of a doubt before a gun is put on board, and tho matter must be decided quite apart from any consideration of the register of the vessels, and with sole regard to the quostion of their ultimate control. No attempt was made to disguise the point at issue. It is whether, for ©sample, a liner like the Olympic, registered as a British ship and owned by the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, a British corporation, has forfeited her right to bo regarded as a British ship and to be armed as such because tho shares in that company are controlled by the International Mercantile Marine Company of New Jersey. Any adverse decision in a single case would, of course, affect many of the finest steamships under the British flag. What applies to the White Star Line would apply equally to other linos in the combine which own ships under the British flag. A London paper remarked recently that theso matters are not necessarily to be looked at only in their cold legal aspect, but the legal definition of a British ship is clearly laid down by the Merchant Shipping Act, which stipulates that a ship registered as British must, bo owned wholly by native born ' or naturalised British subjects, or "bodies corporate established under and subject to the laws of some part of TJis Majesty's Dominions, and having their principal place of business in those Dominions." Tho Oceanic Steam Navigation Company is a body corporate, having its principal place of business in Liverpool, and there seems nothing to prevent it registering its .ships as British whether its shares are owned by British subjects ar not. It is quite possible that Parliament, in legislating to prevent aliens from owning British ships, never dreamed that foreigners would get control of them by the acquisition of shares in corporate bodies. Bo that as it may, any searching inquiry of tho kind suggostcd into the ownership of ships flying tho British ' flag"»seoms to be met at the outset by tho present condition of the law. Aslong as tho' Merchant Shipping Act \ stands the legal position of the combine ships now under the British flag is unassailable. The point must have been before tho law officers of the Crown in 1902, when the combine was. formed. Yet, so far from their advia- | ing tho government that combine ships had ceased to be British ships, they were responsible for an agreement with tho late Mr Pierpont Morgan, whereby the British companies owning British ships were to remain British, "not nominally, but in reality." The majority of their directors were always to bo British subjects, and the ships wore to be officered by. British officers' r.nd manned in reasonable proportion l:y British crews. The Government has also taken steps to check the liberty of certain British steamship companies to extend the principle of the "merger" upon which Mr Morgan's combine was based. It is a condition of the Cunard Company's subvention that the lino shall in futuro bo "all British." No foreigners can hold Cunard shares. It is the same with the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. Under its recent charter alien control is impossible. These two cases may be cited as showing that, while the Government has bees content to leave the Merchant Shipping Act as it is, it has been willing, by agreement with particular steamship companies, to go further than the Act, and put corporato bodies owning British ships under restraint in tho matter of tho nationality of their shareholders. The fact has been recalled that Lord Pirie, in his evidence beforo the Stqamship Subsidies Committoo a few yoars ago, stated that tho late Mr Piorpont Morgaa offered to

make a contract with the Government for fifty years, by which, any British ships owned or built for tho combine would nbf be transferred' to a foreign registry without the written consent of the President of tho Board of Trade, and would be held at tho disposal of the Admiralty for use as cruisers or transports. As is known, the agreement made by the Government with Mr Pierpont Morgan was for twenty years, and Mr Gerald Balfour, in announcing its terms, expressly stated that ono of the reasons for entering into it was that an existing agreement with tho White Star Line, by which its vessels were at tho call of the Admiralty, was about to expire. The inferonce seems inevitable, therefore, that the Government's agreement with the combine is a binding compact, by which the British ships in the combine aro available when required for the service of tho Empire.