NAVY AND ARMY

Waipukurau Press, Volume XVIII, Issue 66, 11 March 1933, Page 3

NAVY AND ARMY

Estimates For Year NEW CONSTRUCTION IS TO BE RESUMED RUGBY, March 9. Increased allocations are made in both the Navy and Army estimates this year. The Navy estimates are £3,093,700 above those for 1932, and in the case of the Army the increase is £1,462,000. The Navy estimates issued to-day show a net total for 1933 of £53,5 70,000, which exceeds the net total for the previous year by £3,093,700. Of this increase £2,355,360 is required to make normal progress with new construction. A large part of the normal expenditure upon shipbuilding in 1932 had been deliberately retarded in the interests of economy and disarmament into subsequent years by the temporary expedient of deferring orders for the 1931 programme. The remainder of the increase provides for an automatic rise in 1933 in the total of non-effective votes including provision amounting to £295.36 7 for increases of retired pay, pensions, and superannuation allowances. The new construction programme provides for four cruisers, one leader, and eight destroyers, three submarines, three sloops, one convoy, one coastal sloop, and small craft. The cruisers constitute the final instalment of the replacement programme due for completion by December 1936 under the terms of the London Naval Treaty: The numbers of destroyers and submarines are the

same as in previous building programmes since the Treaty. The first word of the Admiralty in submiting the estimates was that, like those for previous years, they have been restricted by the exigencies of the financial situation, and do not fully provide all the potential needs of the Navy. It is hoped shortly to renew the interchange of ships between the Royal and Australian Navies, which was suspended for financial reasons. New Zealand’s contributions to the Singapore base amount to £72,000.

TER RIT< )RI A L TR AINING CAMPS AND CADET CORPS The Financial Secretary to the War Office, Mr A. Duff Cooper, in introducing the Army estimates, said that the economies effected in last year’s Estimates in view of the exceptional financial conditions were made with great misgiving. Estimates now presented represented an increase of £l.462,000. The principal increases were connected with the resumption of Territorial camps and school cadet corps. Referring to the mechanisation of the Army he said that experience had justified the adoption of light tractors and one more field artillery brigade had been equipped with it. That they were on right lines in the development of mechanical transport and that the cars in use were admirably adapted for Dominions and colonial use, had been demonstrated last year when a convoy of four vehicles, namely, a 40cwt. six-wheel-er, a 30cw r t. four-wheeler lorry, and a 15cwt. commercial van and a 9 h.p. motor car, travelled from Cairo to Juba, near the Uganda border, 2,900 miles, in 29 consecutive days. The return journey by another route was equally successful. Experiments had been going on for many years regarding the tank corps, and it was now decided that light and medium tanks should be employed in combination, and tank battalions had been reorganised on that basis.

“The first pipe of the day! Can you beat it?” asks “Old Smoker,” in a South Island paper. “I rise at 5 a.m., winter and summer, and the first thing I do is to light up! . I smoke all day long but that first pipe is easily the best! Sometimes I am asked if I never suffer from burnt tongue. I never do'! But then you see, I am particular in my choice of tobacco. Were I to be continually puffing some of those foreign brands we wmt of, I certainly couldn’t indulge so freely as I do. But my tobacco is “New Zealand toasted’’—the pick of the basket for. flavour and ‘allure.’ It contains so little nicotine that it is hardly worth mentioning! This tobacco undergoes special treatment at the factory which destroys most of the nicotine in it.’’ Another feather, in the cap of “toasted”! Four brands only remember: Riverhead Gold, Naw Cut No. 3, Cavendish and Cut Plug No. 10. But ’ware of imitations.