The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1909. THE DEFENCE QUESTION.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13810, 22 January 1909, Page 4

The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1909. THE DEFENCE QUESTION.

The long cable message published yesterday, giving the gist of two speeches made at a dinner to Lord Northcote, late Governor-General of Australia, contained little of immediate interest to New Zealanders, but two subjects were dealt with that may in the future become of importance to this Dominion. The first of these was mentioned by the Earl of Crewe, who presided at the dinner, when he said he did not believe that the colonies were destined to split away from the Motherland, or the Motherland to split i away from the colonies. . The latter ,half:.of this sentence strikes us as .novel. There has been more or less italic of this or that colony "cutting the painter," but we cannot remember 1 having met with the suggestion that the Mother Country might do it. Fifty years ago, and further back in tune, the colonies were looked-upon by many public men in England as an incubus, and New .Zealand itself was colonised in spite of much opposition. The success of the colonies, however, caused all feeling of that kind to die away, and it must have been for the purpose of balancing his sentence merely that the Earl of Crewe made the remark about the Motherland splitting off from the colonies. Nevertheless the remark is one that should not be forgotten or discounted. We venture to say that there is more likelihood of the Motherland splitting away from the colonies than that till split will be opened by the colonies themselves. There is no likelihood of any split at all, so long as all goes well with the British Empire. But supposing—by no means a wild supposition— that Great Britain became involved in a great European war, demanding all the power of her great navy to meet the enemy near her own coasts; it is quite on the cards that public feeling in the Motherland, where the public at large know little of and sare less the distant portions of the Empire, would compel the Government to concentrate its powers of defence to secure the safety of the Homeland, leaving the colonies to their fate. That wotiM be a splitting away by the Motherland, of a very effectual kind. And public opinion at Home would have some sort of justification for applying that compulsion, in the. fact that the colonies pay' but insignificant amounts towards the cost of the Navy. There must be a recognised or unrecognised sense of this particular danger, which has produced the strong desire in the minds of Australians to have a Navy of their own, which has been manifested by the statesmen of the Commonwealth of late. The second subject touched upon that may demand attention in this country by and by is that nightmare of white Australia, the tropical Northern Territory, practically uninhabited by Europeans, but a wide open temptation to the millions of the East, should these ever begin to "swarm" as these have swarmed before. Lord Northcote pointed out this danger sufficiently, and it is only necessary to add to what he said, that if the disaster he alluded to befalls Australia, New Zealand will not long be safe, unless she makes herself safe by multiplying her population, and teaching it the duty of self-defence.