TWO KEELS TO ONE.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 508, 15 May 1909, Page 5

TWO KEELS TO ONE.

NAVV POLICY. THE ADVICE OF LIEUT. BELLAIRS. LEAGUE REORGANISATION. i' TELEGBAPH'HPRESS ASEOCIATION--COrTRIGHT.) London, May 13. . The Navy League is being reorganised. Lieutenaut Carlyon Bellairs, M.P., vicelairman, has recommended that tho -'ague's simplest formula would be to deand 'that Britain lay down two keels of arships to every ono laid down by Ger- . niny. ' ITALY'S FOUR DREADNOUGHTS. (Rec. May 14, 10.57 p.m.) London, May 14. The "Giornale d'ltalia" states that four :alian Dreadnoughts instead of two will be mipleted in three years. The naval estimates have been incre&£od y six millions sterling, which will be Bpent t the rato of a million annually. NAVAL STRENGTH OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE. The four Dreadnoughts referred to are those ur which a mm of .£B,ooo,ooo—two millions ,'uch—was voted in 1908. The above anlouncement follows rapidly on th'e visit of the .Caiser to Italy, who lately had appeared as a dther lukewarm. member of the Triple Aliance. It was announced the otter day that uistria-Hungary will have four Dreadnoughts . ;ampleted within two years. If these statenents are correct, by 1912 Germany's two allies' should each have at least four Dreadloughts completed; that is to say, there would ■be eight to consider along with Germany's 17 (the Liberal Governments estimate); or 25 ■Dreadnoughts in the Triple Alliance by 1912. if .Mr.-Balfour's estimate of Germany's building operations (21 by 1912) is accepted, 'the nguro will be 29. Italy's 190&-09 naval estimates amounted to .£5,803,881, as against i5 1 624,920 for 1907-08. The sum allotted to new construction was J<1|374,165, DOUBLING ON GERMANY. - Tho Two Keels to One standard is ' thus' acclaimed by Mr.' W. T. dtsad: "The two-Power standard plus 10 per: oent. for contingencies served its turn'very well in the past. It is no longer useful. It is only possible with the limitation or condition that the United States is not one of the Powers included in tho comparison. Sir Kdward Grev pointed this out long ago, but his prudent, qualification of the formula is habitually • . . - . " Exclusion of United Statei. "There are three reasons why the United States- Navy is excluded. .First,- because the Americans are an integral part of the Englishspeaking world. Secondly, because the defenceless state of tho Canadian frontier shows that an Anglo-American conflict is not regarded as possible; and thirdly, because the Americans, who in a few years will numbor 100,000,000, will in all:probability have a larger fleet than any. nation which only numbers 50,000,000. . "If we must reject the two-Power, plus 10 .iDr cent. formula, we must equally but regretiully abandon the status quo formula put forward at The Hague Conference. If the Russian standstill proposition had been adopted in- 1899 we should have obtained: an interna-, tional guarantee for tho assured superiority of tho British to tho German Navy on a four or five to one basis. Yet so'unthinking is the general public that I was assailed by the Dingoes as a fanatical pacificist when I sought to secure the fouT to ono status quo,! and now I am assailed by the pacificists as a Jingo when I put forward the much more modest standard Of two to ona . :- •- : v The Only Practicable Way. . v ; 1 '-The only practicable intelligible standard is that-we must maintain a Navy twice as strong, as that of thenext strongest European Power. Thero is nothing provocative in this formula. It is an immense surrender of a position which we-have-hitherto- held without any complaint from Germany. Instead of trying to maintriain tho status quo of 1899, with its four or five to ono supremacy, we content ourselves with moroly laying down two keels to the German ono. There is not a competent German naval authority ; wh'o doe V.not admit that this is an extremely modest proposal, and ono whioh errs dangerously on ; tlie side of weakness. For Great Britain, owing to her world-wido Empire, has to maintain ; eighteon battleships outside her homo waters. „ "If war should come. Gormany counts upon finding at least ono ally, and the addition of that , ally s ships to her fighting lino would probably give her, if not a superiority to tho British Fleet in , homo waters, at all events'a fair fighting chance, which at presont tho Germans ruefully admit they have not got. This, then, is tho irreducible minimnm which the nation should demand from the Executive of the day. . . -