AUSTRIA'S ARMAMENTS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1083, 23 March 1911, Page 5

AUSTRIA'S ARMAMENTS.

« DELAY URGED. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyrieht Vienna, March 21. An agitation has been started in the Austrian Parliament, urging the Government to delay the construction of warships and to negotiate an arbitration treaty with Italy. SIXTEEN DREADNOUGHTS IN 1016. The taxpayers of the Dual Monarchy now know their fate (wrote "The Times" correspondent on February 5). Four Ministers broke it to them _ gently at Budapest yesterday. Admiral Count Montecuceoli, as a gallant sailor, took tho lead, and launched himself straightway into a sea of figures of which the confines, visible until 1016, widen out thereafter into a boundless ocean. Under his wizard hand men and ships, displacements and calibres, speeds and ranges grouped themselves neatly as a setting to his maxim that "even a little war is dearer than a big fleet." In 1916, ho said, the crews of the Austro-Hungarian Navy would number 17,000, and would, in ■ subsequent years, bo increased to 20,000 or 21,000. The total estimates, hitherto £2,000,000, would remain at JE5,200,000 a year up to 1914, when they would riso to more than XG,000,000. It was unlikely that the Dreadnoughts would rapidly become obsolete. Vessels with a broadside of 12 heavy guns do not readily got out of date. Ho agreed with Sir William White in thinking that any very considerable increase in displacement or calibre beyond tho presont maxima would be unnecessary, but he took as the basis of his calculations an AustroHungarian tattle fleet of 16 capital ships (four Dreadnoughts art the present extent of tho Austrian programme). He admitted that Austria-Hungary builds 10 per cent, dearer than England, Germany, and Amorica, and suggested that it might be well to clip the wings of tho Iron Syndicate by placing orders abroad; he professed to comprehend that the Delegates , Should find the cost of Dreadnoughts "infinitely high," but ho consoled them with the remark that in tho past Austria-Hun-gary had spent much less on her navy . than had been spent by other States.