DEBT TO NAVY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20365, 24 July 1934, Page 8

DEBT TO NAVY.

N.Z. Urged to Recognise Obligation. PROTECTION OF COUNTRY. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, July 2i. “In the circumstances in which we have placed ourselves, I cannot understand any New Zealander who looks at the world with seeing eyes failing to recognise the debt to the British Navy, but from time to' time, so far from this debt being recognised, * hostility is 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 announced a slight increase in the expenditure for defence purposes, and a meeting of students of Victoria College, representative of the various college societies, condemned the Government, It may be assumed that thev would be equally hostile- to the in creased vote for air defences which was recently announced in England by Mt Baldwin, and that they would be opposed to the maintenance of a strong Navy. “ I think that these particular students are quite wrong, but they are intensely sincere. They are at a state tr. life when they are apt to be filled by generous emotions. It should never be forgotten that the students of today will in much less than ten years' time be the dominant force in the formation of public opinion. The surest way to avoid war is to remove occasions for ill-feeling and jealousy, and in a crowded world empty countries which do not support the proportion of mankind that they ought to support are a perpetual cause cf ill-feeling and must finally cause an explosion. *' What we ought to do is, first of all, to increase our low birth-rate, and, second only to that, encourage immigration, whatever discomfort this entails. In the meantime we should support the British Navy, because it is only under its powerful protection that we shall be allowed to have any choice in the matter at all.”