The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1870.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2306, 27 September 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1870.

Governments are proverbially slow to move. In fact, if they will succeed in any action taken, they must be preceded by public opinion. Public opinion, when deeply stirred, manifests itself by public meetings ; and we may therefore fairly suppose that notwithstanding the plain and unmistakable danger of England being unwillingly dragged into European war, and the consequent liability to be attacked, public opinion is that there is time enough to prepare when the news of war comes. This is not the best way of meeting danger. It is not a plan that a sailor would follow in managing his vessel in prospect of a storm. His anxiety is to make all snug, so that when the gale becomes fierce he may feel safe through the measures he has taken. Not a sailor on board would feel secure were not the needful steps adopted, nor would they have the slightcstconfidence in a captain who evinced so little foresight as to leave all preparation until the blast was upon the ship. Hurried preparations are seldom well made. There must be confusion when a hundred tilings are to be done at once, each of which requires more time to be done properly than can be given to the whole. Up to this time the Colonies have acted upon this principle. The Press lias occasionally sounded the note of warning, but war seemed so very distant a thing that nobody seriously realised its possibility. The Russian war did not create any very great alarm, for England and Franco were united, and it was not the

day for ironclads, needle guns, breechloaders, and one hundred pound shot. Nobody had learned to fear the naval power of Russia, excepting military and naval men, who knew what they were talking about, and they did not like to tell what they knew, lest the people should call them “ croakers.” Peace came, however, just in time. Although many of Russia’s noble ships lay sunk in the harbor of Sebastopol, and many more were shut up to inglorious inaction in the Baltic Sea, there was a remnant that got, nobody knows how or when, into the North Pacific, and were said to be feeling their way South, where they might have proved troublesome. One would have thought this would have pointed out the necessity for some security being taken against far greater possible danger. But that passed away, and with it the uneasy feeling that the knowledge of what might have happened raised. Then came the American civil war, with which England had nothing to do, but which brought palpably before the Australian Colonies, in the visit of the Shenandoah, what was possible with modern machinery. True, it only happened to Melbourne ; but it was a warning to the Victorians which was not lost upon them, although they are not very forward with their defensive preparations. It is quite likely that at the times we speak of Dunedin would not have been thought worth plundering ; but times have altered, Dunedin has become richer and more tempting, and the means of defence not greater ; so that those

warnings, which then might safely be disregarded, cannot now be ignored. Our business now is to consider what we are capable of doing in case of an attack. It is no use acting like an ostrich, and hiding our heads lest we should see danger. The better wo are prepared to repel it, the less danger there is of being attacked. The people in Hobart Town, if we may judge by the tone of the papers, are fully more alive to the situation than we arc in New Zealand, and are consoling them selves with the idea that England will not forsake her Colonies, but will fight their battles for them. But England has already declared how far she will go. She has said the British Government will do their best to protect the Colonies against naval attack, and no doubt, so far as fleets go, she is quite able to give full employment to any naval power at Avar with her. It is not fleets that are to be feared, but errant cruisers. The Colonies are expected to defend themselves against such attacks, for she will not provide land forces. From what has taken (place in Victoria, it seems probable, had application been made, Great Britain would not have objected to provide efficient artillery for harbor and coast defence. It is perhaps not yet too late, for avo cannot suppose European complications have had sufficient time to tangle themselves so as to drag unwilling combatants to take part in the strife; but in the meantime our duty is plain WG should ascertain our means of defence, and arrange that ■every man should have his p,hi<;G and duty assigned to him in case of need.