MAJOR BLUNDER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 29, 4 February 1935, Page 7

MAJOR BLUNDER

SINGAPORE BASE EMPIRE'S WHITE ELEPHANT ATTACK BY WARD PRICE AUSTRALIA NOT PROTECTED [By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright! Received Feb. 3. 6.30 p.m. LONDON, Feb. 2. Mr. Ward Price, in an article in the Daily Mail, points out that £6,500,000 has been expended on the Empire’s costliest white elephant,” the Singapore naval base, ind four more millions will go the ;ame way during the next three years. Britain, while her own unemployed stand idle, maintains 3000 coolies to transform the jungle backwaters into a harbour requiring 8,000,000 eubic yards oi excavation, 5,000,000 yards of Iredging, and 1,000,000 yards of concrete for a mile along a gran-ite-faced waterfront where the navy’s three most powerful ships may come 8000 miles for repairs in a £1,200,000 floating dock, while the crews, numbering 1300 apiece, swelter in barracks. The only foreign warships within 2500 miles are a few old Dutch gunboats in Java, and an occasional American at Manila. The base owes its existence to fantastic fearfulness such as led Lewis Carroll’s white knight to keep a rat trap on his horse’s back. Even in the event of an Anglo-Japanese war no Government would send a-battle fleet to the other end of Asia, risking a hrust at the Empire’s heart by a European nation’s sudden de•laration of an alliance with Japan. The fleet would not go beyond Singapore. A British naval offensive m Japanese waters would demand three-fold superiority, and the fleet could not protect Australia, because the Japanese route thither would be 4000 miles farther East. Australia, for a fraction of the cost of Singapore, could be equipped with an air force capable of destroying hostile warships and transports 500 miles from the coast. The construction of Singapore was a major blunder which Japan regards with resentment.