DEBT TO NAVY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19860, 25 July 1934, Page 6

DEBT TO NAVY

SCANT RECOGNITION IN SOME QUARTERS. By Telegrapft—Press Association WELLINGTON, July 24. “In the circumstances in which we have placed ourselves. I cannot understand the New Zealander who looks at the world with seeing eyes, failing to recognise our debt to the British Navy, but from time to time, so far from this debt being recognised, hostility has been shown by New Zealanders to any form of military’ or naval effort,” said Mr J. B. Callan, K.C., in an address to the Wellington Branch of the Navy League. The New Zealand Government had announced a slight increase in the expenditure for defence purposes, he said, but a meeting of students of Victoria College, representative of the various college societies, condemned the Government. “It may be assumed that they will be equally hostile to an increased vote for the air defences, which was recently announced in England by Mr Stanley Baldwin, and that they are opposed to the maintenance of a strong navy,” he proceeded. “I think these particular students are quite wrong, but they are intensely sincere. They are at a state in life when they are apt to be filled by generous emotions. It should never be forgotten that the students of to-day will, in much less than 10 years time, be the dominant force in the formation oi oublic opinion." “The surest way to avoid war is to remove the occasions for ill-feeling and jealousy, and in the crowded world, empty countries, which do not support their proportion of mankind that they ought to support, are a perpetual cause of ill-feeling and must finally cause an explosion. What we ought to do is. first of all. increase our low birth-rate, and secondly only to that, encourage immigrations, whatever discomfort this entails. Meantime, we should support the British Navy because it is only under its powerful protection that we shall be allowed to have any chance in the matter at all,” he added.