THE NAVY LEAGUE AND THE FLEET

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2458, 11 May 1915, Page 3

THE NAVY LEAGUE AND THE FLEET

MR. FRED JANE'S TESTIMONY. In the "Evening Standard" of March 1, 1915, Mr. Fred. T. Jane, the eminent naval critic and expert, author of "Fighting Ships," and many other wellknown works, makes tha following statement: — "No one wants to crab Mr. Winston Churchill at a time like the present, when he needs all the help ho can get from a nation determined to back him up. But when he is merely engaged in dealing, out soft soap the fortunes of the Empire are not imperilled by one's pointing out that the soap may as well go to the right shop. "Mr. Churchill (who must have inadvertently swallowed some of the soap himself) told the House of- Commons that the Navy was its 'child.' Polico statistics tend to reconci'e us to parentage being attributed to the wrong quarter. But for barefaced perjury, calling the Navy the child of the House of Commons will never be beaten. The House of Commons had nothing to do with the matter whatever. The parent of the existing modern British Navy is the Navy League. "I hold no brief for the Navy League. I believe that in the past I have crabbed it in this column more often than I have praised it. But I do, believe in fair play. _ And just ordinary common fair play is that it is absolutely and entirely <lu>; to the Navy League alone, that the British Navy possesses the naval superiority which it does possess to-day. "There are, of course, a few notable exceptions, but taking the House of Commons aB a whole, it voted for a strong Navy because the Navy League compelled it to do so; and for no other reason whatever. "There is a time to keep still silence and a time when to bellow out facts. That time is now. Churchill or no Churchill, soft soap or no soft soap, we cannot afford to risk being beaten by Germany in order that a few hundred time-serverß may have a chance to pat their chests and later ,on lie about how 'I helped to save England.' They did nothing of the sort; the majority of them never made the slightest effort till the Navy League frightened them into it.' Credit to whom credit is due! It is the Navy League which has so far saved us from the fate of Belgium."