NAVAL BALANCE

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1935, Page 12

NAVAL BALANCE

UPSETTING EFFECT OF PACT. SCANDINAVIAN KINGDOMS. Stockholm, July 20. The three Scandinavian kingdoms, which have been called “the last outposts of sanity in Europe,” are being driven to strengthen their defences and join the world-wide rearmament race by the Anglo-German naval agreement. The agreement has come to all three as the most serious shock since the world war, for at one stroke it has upset the naval equilibrium in Northern Europe, which dates from the armistice in 1918. To the extent that. this equilibrium depended on the inefficiency of the Russian fleet and on the naval disarmament of Germany, it was artificial, yet it gave Sweden, Norway and Denmark 17 years of effortless security, during which they began to feel that they alone among the European States had solved the problems of peace and disarmament. From this viewpoint the sudden reemergence of Germany as a strong naval power, although inevitable in the long run, seems more significant than the creation of an instrument to prevent Anglo-German naval rivalry in the future. In the Swedish view Germany lias now recaptured more than her pre-war position in the Baltic. “UNCHALLENGED CONTROL.” “The German fleet will now be in unchallenged control of the Baltic,” writes the liberal newspaper Goeteborgs Han-dels-och Sjoefarts-Tidning,” one of the most responsible organs of Swedish opinion. “Every new unit added to the German fleet makes Sweden’s position so much worse. Even before 1914 our position was better, as then the Russian and German fleets were about balanced. “Since Britain has allowed the Baltic and the Skagerrak to be alienated from the sphere of British interests we have only France to look to for our support.” To Denmark the agreement means that the Great and Little Belt and the Sound recover the strategic importance that they had before and during the war, with the consequence that the problem of Danish national defence must be considered afresh. German newspapers have already reminded Denmark that she controls the entrances to the Baltic and that Danish neutrality can be maintained only if Denmark retains the power to close or open these entrances at will. Moreover, British superiority in the North Sea is believed to be at an end. The first effect of the naval agreement has been to strengthen the hands of all those who favour naval rearmament and air force extensions. As the views of the Swedish Social Democrats, the party now in office have undergone a profound chance in the past two or three years, there will be less resistance than formerly to expenditure on national defence. SWEDEN STOPS DISARMING. The days of disarmament are over in Sweden. Even if the present Social Democratic Government is returned to office after the general elections in 1936, as there is to-day no reason to doubt, it may be assumed that there will be increased expenditure on aerial defence and probably on naval defence also. Preparations for protection of the civilian population of Stockholm and Gothenburg against air attacks have been going on for some time. Plans, moreover, have been prepared for concentrating all Swedish foreign trade at Gothenburg on the North Sea in order to avoid any independence on the Baltic in the next war. The military and naval authorities have insisted for years that special measures were required for the defence of the Island of Gothland, which if there were war between the two great Baltic Powers would prove a tempting air base for either of them. The Aland Islands were demilitarised by an international convention signed in 1921, but as they command both the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia with its important timber ports and to Stockholm they are naturally ever-present in the minds of the Swedish naval authorities. As long as Finland holds the islands there is no danger to Sweden, but if they were in German or Russian hands they would be a serious threat.