LABOUR AND SINGAPORE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19247, 26 February 1925, Page 4

LABOUR AND SINGAPORE

It would be manifestly absurd to imagine that. Air. Stanley Baldwin and his colleagues arc likely to be perturbed in the slightest degree by the effusion that has been despatched to tho Prime Minister by the Solomons of the Political Labour Party in Wellington. Their diatribe anont tho allegedly wicked impropriety of the British Government in determining to proceed with the construction of a naval base at Singapore is, as an exposition of Labour’s international policy, useful only in so far as it discloses Labour’s readiness to sacrifice. Imperial security for the sake of a vain illusion. From any other point of view it. is as | worthless as it is ridiculously presumptuous. Morever, its inferential suggestion that the Baldwin Government is guilty of an offensive gesture is a gross misrepresentation. For proof of this we need go no further than the fact that having recently given a token of international goodwill by agreeing conditionally to remit about a billion pounds sterling of the debts [due to her by the Allies, Great Britain

has again taken the conciliatory lead by holding up her naval construction until the possibilities of another disarmament conference have been fully probed. This postponement, should have been sufficient to remind the Labour spokesmen of Wellington that both before and since the, Washington Conference Britain has shown an admirable inclination to load the world in sincere, disarmament operations. In the light of Great Britain’s consistently pacific attitude, Labour’s conception of the Singapore base as an • Tensive gesture is nonsensical.