SEA TRAINING.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 142, 18 June 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

SEA TRAINING.

The need for a sea-training system and for a merchant fleet under the national flag was emphasised by Captain Selwyn Day, C. 8., D. 5.0., in a lecture to members of the United Service Institution in Sydney. The establishment of such a system, he said, was to be regarded as an irreducible provision of insurance against those intermittent, inescapable and unforeseeable international crises recurrent since the dawn of humanity. Hence, on each country claiming the status and prestige of independent nationhood lay the responsibility of the acceptance of this insurance liability, or, in default thereof, of tacitly admitting an inferiority complex in statesmanship. Since an Empire was in itself an expression of conquest and a denial of any inalienable right to possession by reason of inheritance, it surely followed that ownership was only deservedly invested in those of nautical efficiency—an integral part of the military machine—and assuming that in either respect there was no material military inequality. No political sophistry could justify neglect to maintain up-to-date the military shield that had been bequeathed to them.