“SUICIDAL MADNESS”

Gisborne Times, Volume LXI, Issue 9850, 31 October 1924, Page 7

“SUICIDAL MADNESS”

PERIL OF DWINDLING BRITISH

NAVY

WARNING BY LONDON TIMES

ZEAL FOR UNIVERSAL PEACE BLINDS POLITICIANS TO ’* ' DANGER.

LONDON, Out. 22. Declaring that even from a purely British and Imperial point of view, the power of the navy has been brought down to a point perilously near the margin of safety, The Times in a leading article says that any further reduction would lie suicidal madness.

“The determination of the country’s naval strength is, or should ho, a question outside the region of party polities,” says the article, “hut the trouble is that the Labor Party, and many Liberals, in their consuming zeal for universal peace and disarmament blind themselves to the reality of danger. Air MacDonald and his'party declined to carry out thefull programme of naval construction, modest as it was, which their predecessors regarded as the minimum essential for safety.

“There are, no donffib, among the more temperately-minded members of the Labor Party many who are alive to the vital necessity of maintaining the navv at the full'strength permitted hv "the Washington agreement; hut here, as elsewhere, the party as a whole has shown that its policy is dictated hv fear of its extremists, and that it cannot be trusted to take tne necessary precautions for the safety of the country, the supply of food, and the (Security 6i its imperial communications.” Lord Chelmsford, speaking at a dinner given hv the Navy League, said “To-day the" Empire’s cruisers number 48 compared with 110 in 1914. H thev are not replaced there w-il he no cruisers fit ior sea- in 19-37.”