A BREEZE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19858, 4 June 1927, Page 11

A BREEZE

ABOUT NAVAL COBWEBS ADMIRAL HITS OUT. LONDON, May 31. There was a stiff naval breeze at the League of Nations Union Conference in London on the reduction of naval armaments. Rear-Admiral J. D. Allen, who commanded H.M.S. Kent at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, said that since the war there had been unceasing toil, disbursement, and preparation for another war, which nobody wanted. He hotly criticised the prejudice of some senior naval authorities against 11 newfangled ideas.” “I once was almost thrown from the room because I suggested that some day people would have wireless in their homes,” he said. Naval officers 1 education ceased at the age of 13, when they entered the navy; and at 40 they became most resentful of criticism. “Such men,” he said, 1 ‘will oppose any limitation of armaments.” “Subversive Gentlemen” Captain G. D. Finshawe, M.P., a member of the Naval Inter-Allied Commission of Control in Berlin, 1920-23, said that such statements from a British admiral should not bo allowed to pass. It was known that there were subversive gentlemen in the League of Nations who had no view of the Empire’s welfare. “We have them in the House of Commons,” he said. “They cheer the Russian uproar. In my view, some members of the minority movement have got a footing in the League of Nations Union.

Rear-Admiral Allen subsequently apologised for saying more than he meant. “It must be attributed to my lack of education,” he said.

Commander Denny, general secretary of the Navy League, declared that some members of the Union said disgraceful things about the * murderous navy.”