NATIONAL SECURITY

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 89, 12 October 1932, Page 8

NATIONAL SECURITY

DISARMAMENT ISSUE

"ONLY LINE OF DEFENCE"

A plea for a more sane viewpoint in the vexed question of disarmament was made iby Commodore Burges Watson, Commanding the New Zealand Division of the BoyalNavy, in an address before the New Plymouth Botary Club. "The last hundred years will be known as the age of, 'machinery,' " said Commodore Burges Watson. "There is a danger that the next hundred years will be known as the age of talk!". , , In recent years, he continued, there had been many, many conferences and talks. Politicians were not content with voicing opinions in their own electorates. They must needs hold round-table-conferences on every and all sorts of subjects. Many of the conferences were on the question of disarmament. But if there was to be disarmament it must be absolutely general and must further offer a guarantee of security. How this security was to be guaranteed he did not know. POSITION IN EUROPE. Duringrecent-years many slogans had been loosed upon an already overburdened world, said Commodore Burges Watson. "War to end war," "Making the country fit for heroes to live in," were two typical examples.. But one of the worst was "The divine right of the self-determination of nations." In Europe numerous small States which had been merged into larger ones, had reverted to individual nations, with-a resultant dangerous growth in national feeling. The whole of Europe had become "Balkanised" and the chances of an explosion were greatly increased. It _ was the Commodore's considered opinion that the safety and peace of Europe to-day rested on far more delicate ground than in the years 1905-14, immediately preceding the Great War. England and the British Empire must maintain its security. Naval expenditure was already cut to bedrock and it must not be allowed to decrease further the power and efficiency of the nation's defensive force. "If economies are to be made," concluded Commodore Burges Watson, "then let them be made in the luxuries of the country and not in curtailing its only lino of defence!"

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