NAVIES IN THE BLACK SEA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 424, 15 November 1930, Page 13 (Supplement)

NAVIES IN THE BLACK SEA

•‘The name G<nd>en recalls pleasant memories of suspense during the early months of the war. Would she reach the Daidanclles? And. when she did reach them, would she bring Turkey into the war? Both questions were answered in the affirmative, with the result that the war greatly extended in area and prolonged in duration.” the Economist remarked recently. “Thus v.e cannot read without a twinge of disquiet the news that in August the GooEm—reconditioned nt last—-underwent

•>•<‘<l trials ami gunnerv tests in the Sea of Marmora. Whcthei as the Ger- . .an Goebrn o r as the Turkish Yamuz

Selim, this dreadnought is a bird of ill omen; and her reappearance has already evoked answering gestures in neighbouring countries. For instance, early in the year, when the reconditioning of the Goeben was already in progress, two dreadnoughts of the Soviet Baltic Fleet —the Pariskeya-Kommuna and the Profintern—passed through the Mediterranean and the Straits into Ihe Black Sea on a visit to their sisters of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet; and this visit I has not yet come to an end. . . . This i increase in the local naval strength of two of the Black Sea Powers is unfortunate, because it looks like the first step toward naval competition and because this incipient naval rivalry is already threatening to spread. There is now talk of Rumania constructing, at great expense, a naval base at Costanza. Unfortunately, the Black Sea adjoins some of the principal danger zones of Europe, and local naval competition in the Black Sea would readily link itself up with the general European system of tension.”