The Timaru Herald THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1938 CHANGE IN AUSTRALIA’S NAVAL POLICY.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21184, 3 November 1938, Page 6

The Timaru Herald THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1938 CHANGE IN AUSTRALIA’S NAVAL POLICY.

Australia’s reported decision to add a first-class battleship of 40,000 tons carrying 16-inch guns provides a reminder to the dwellers in the Southern Pacific that a period of happy security has ended and that new dangers demand new and more expensive safeguards. Obviously the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia is being largely guided by the advice offered some weeks ago by Admiral Sir Howard Kelly, whose plans for the naval defence of Australia represents a reversal of the naval building programme which has been followed by Australia since the war. The Australian authorities might very well say, however, that the adoption of a bigger navy policy does not necessarily present an admission that the policy of the last twenty years has been at fault —and this is the aspect of defence that must be faced by all the Dominions—but only that world conditions have so changed in the last two years (since the lapsing of the old naval treaties and the signing of the AngloGerman naval agreement) that formerly accepted theories will serve no longer. In a word, new conditions implying new dangers demand new measures of defence. Hitherto Australia -was bound by the terms of naval treaties that limited the number of capital ships, and any capital ship built for a Dominion Government meant one less for the British Fleet. In fact, Australia’s naval defence planning until the present day, has been based on world conditions that prevailed before the AngloGerman naval agreement had given Germany leave to build a navy up to 35 per cent, of the British Navy, which the Nazi regime is doing as fast as can be done. Moreover, Germany is building within the treaty tonnage limitations, several battleships of a most formidable type. Australian statesmen and the naval advisers in the Commonwealth do not overlook the fact that before German rearmament began, Britain’s naval superiority in Europe was so great that she could contemplate sending practically her entire battle fleet to the Pacific if it was needed there. To-day she could still afford to send a very considerable force, but each year the growing German Navy is coming closer to its allotted strength, and the ships Britain could send to the Pacific are becoming fewer. In these circumstances the necessity for the Pacific Dominions to contribute their own capital ships to the Imperial Navy becomes increasingly urgent: As Sir Howard Kelly pointed out the other day the existence of a capital ship In Australian waters would mean that. In any circumstances, an aggressor would have to send part of his own battle fleet against Australia If he set out upon a large-scale attack; would, in fact, have to divide his main fleet, and could not, as he could to-day, If Australia were thrown for a time on her own resources, cover a serious onslaught merely by using cruisers and smaU craft. All the naval experts say that if one battleship was stationed In Australia, an aggressor could hardly send a force containing vulnerable ships, such as transports and aircraft-carriers, against Australia without detaching fewer than three or four capital ships to protect the convoy. It is, therefore, because Australia is looking well into the uncertain future that a reversal of the traditional naval policy of the Dominions, as far as it relates to the Commonwealth, is about to take place.