NAVY LEAGUE WANTS LARGER ARMAMENTS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19134, 29 July 1930, Page 9

NAVY LEAGUE WANTS LARGER ARMAMENTS.

Per Press Association. DUNEDIN', July 29. At the annual conference of the New Zealand. Branches of the Navy iJeague, Mr J. W. Smith, the president, stressed the need for a sufficiently powerful navy to patrol the Pacific trade lanes. Mr Smith said that Britain refused to believe that the virtue that had impelled her past achievements was exhausted in the nation. Self-sacrifice could go so far as to "become an inferiority complex, and it shqjild be remembered that at least two, and probably three, other nations had developed the converse complex of superiority. The most astounding event in the world wa# the ljcent conference, as the result of which it was clear that Britain had reduced herself to an inferior position to that cf the United States. New Zealand was the only real sea Dominion of the Empire and required nothing less than a complete unit of the Royal Navy to patrol its trade lanes. Mr Dougail (Canterbury) also spoke strongly on the serious position the Empire had been placed in by the decisions of the Naval Conference. Auckland remits, urging the early completion of the Singapore Naval Base, were carried, Lietrtenant-Com-mander Connors pointing out that the United States had a wonderfully efficient base at Pagopago, within easy striking distance of eastern Australia, New Zealand and British Columbia.