SEA POWER.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12145, 7 September 1908, Page 4

SEA POWER.

BBiTArar-fiayij "the; rprice of admiralty," and the price t is high : but. the advantage isC inestimable. ■ Theb&er nation^ strive to keep pace. They can only imitate, and they- are always years behind the leader. A reviewer refers to +he proposed 21,000-torr improved; Dreadnought to illustrate: the British supremacy in these matters: In build-: ing the Dreadnought, he says, Great Britain took a stegsta-iiaval construction a. long way in, advance of the other great Powers. All of these hastened to follow her example and began building ships of the Dreadnought class. It was a cross between the battleship and cruiser, combining tho qualities of both, and its many advantages were immediately recognised. "Now, before the nations have completed or put to the trial test their imitations, Great Britain has startled them by taking another and still further step in naval construction. Sho has laid the keel of an entirely new type of battleship, which, when! completed, will bo as much an improvemont on the Dreadnought as that was on former cruisers. It will carry heavier armour and guns of greater range and power than those of any battleship afloat or building. Its engines will bo run by gas instoad of coal, thus doing away at ono stroke with the most cumbersome element for the generation of steam, and wonderfully simplifying tho whole system of navigating power. Tho consumption of coal is always a tell-tale at soa, and many haro boon tho devices triod unsuccessfully for tho pur-

poso of preventing its betrayal of the! presence of"■' warship's. >;. The new battleships iwill iiave "all the advantages of the old sailing ship in cleanliness, with the additional' charm ?o'fc invisibility, for it will have no tophamper of spreading sails, One such ship will have an immense superiority' 'over all other battleships. ' Practically, it will be better than threo or ..four. of. .them in actual warfare, and, if successful, as the Admiralty is sure it will be, it must work a new revolution in naval armaments. To* keep up with this new departure, the other nations will have to adopt the new type of,battleship, their Dreadnoughts being already, obsolete in comparison, even before they are launched! Germany, if she is not to be distanced in the race, must revise.her naval plans at more .than treble the cost, for a ship of the new .class, will cost twentyfivo million dollars. Surely this is a step towards the cessation in the policy of naval cowt>otition. : .....