BRITISH NAVAL SUPREMACY.

Wairoa Bell, Volume XX, Issue 219, 18 February 1908, Page 2

BRITISH NAVAL SUPREMACY.

The Imperial Government, acting under pressure from public opinion, intends, it is said, to increase the Naval estimates by a million and a half sterling, making up tho amount in part by reducing the military establishment. .The. necessity for such an expenditure is jHklorable evidence of /the fitter recent -Peace from which so much was expected.

This is sadly confessed-, by. Mr W. T. Stead, the militant champion of peace, and anti-militarism. In a series of articles on the German naval gramme, Mr Stead very justly argued that the increase, of three millions made in the German naval estimates at g time of profound peace, taken in eon junction with a clear intimation, of further naval expansion, “is avowedly a prbelaimLtion to all the world that- Germany means to depose us, if » she can, from the position of relative superiority at sea which we now possess.” And he declares that for every warship Germany -builds, Britain must lay down two, even if it be necessary to expend our last penny, because “ the maintenance of the British Navy’s unquestioned superiority is for us a matter of life and death ” a matter which we shall

“no more discuss than a swimmer discusses the necessity, of keeping his head above tho water.” We believe there will be very little difference of opinion among British people on thi* question. Our army is admittedly inadequate to defend the Home country or the Empire against the vast military organisations of the Continental nations. Britain has entered into no form of rivalry there. Our insular situation, the vastness of our shipping interests, and the widely scattered character of the Empire, indicate a naval supremacy as our surest means of defence—and it may be remarked that in any war with a European power the function of the Navy would be mainly defensive. No one, of course, can dispute the absolute right of the German Government to pursue whatever policy they deem n, cess.ivy for the protection of national interests; nevertheless it can only be. regarded as deplorable that at a time when professions of a desire for general amity have been most effusive, the crushing burden imposed by military and naval establishments have been * increased.