THE FRENCH NAVY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1025, 14 January 1911, Page 15

THE FRENCH NAVY.

GRAVE CRITICISMS OF-ITS. ' CONDITION. "A poverty-stricken. Navy." This is tho term employed, to describe tlia existing French , flqot by M.. Bcnazet, the Hoportcr on the Naval 'Estimates for 1911/ . Apparently there has.not been a great improvement -since tho ; publication--•of tho amazing report by. tho Commission••oli tho Navy, presided over by M. Dplcasse, wjiich' brought about tho fall of M. Clemonceau's.Government in 1009. The declino of Franco as ' a naval power is not, says M. l3enazot, tho result of lack of funds. "Tho' money has not' been lacking, •it has nierely been ill-spent. It is only within tho last four years that tho expenditure of Germany. 011 her Navy has'been greater than that of Franco, yet Germany has displaced Franco as tho second naval power of tlio world because sho has spent her money better." ■ "The last four years," says tho Reporter, "will go down in history as a period of stagnation from tho naval point of view. We have not built any. new ships of tho lino sinco tho six battleships of, tho 1906 programme; and these will not bo ready for servico before 1911, by which time Germany's preponderance will bo even inoro marked. "The French Navy has been lulled by the application of a narrow and falso military doctrine; narrow becauso wo have thought only of sluggish ilefenco, —instead of working from the idea of offence, the only profitable oiic; falso becauso we havo spent our timo in obtaining ships which are fast, but which are insufficiently armed, and therefore of no military value."