NAVAL BUILDING.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 August 1921, Page 2

NAVAL BUILDING.

M'STBAI.TAN AND N. 7.. CABLE ASSOCIATION. FURTHER SPEECHES. LONDON, August 4. In the Naval debate Mr Churchill deprecated any aggravation of the present Situation hv extreme ianguage. Their leading capital units Tad not with the exception of <: Hood” ships been reinforced for more than seven years. Meantime two other navies had revolutionised construction, according to lessons learned in th© late war. He said.—“lf wc delay another year, we shall sink to the level of a third rate naval power, and may never recover We would exist then as a great power only on sufferance. Our power to guide events, for good would cease, and w© could not extend to the Dominions that protection which we have always been proud to extend. Our hopes for success of the Washington conference are the sinccrest, but unless we could assume that Hie ships now building in Japan and America would be scrapped, any disarmament decision at Washington would he irrelevant to the decision we have reached to-night” NAVAL EXPANSION. LONDON. August l. Colonel Ameiy in a speech <>tt Hie naval estimates, said: “If we fail to construct now shall we stereotype our present position of inferiority? Britain must declare that she will not Accept a position of definite naval inferiority ? 'Lot us be sure we can rely on our own strength. We must never allow our sea power to fall to a point when we shall be forced to make entangling agreements to '.(void a path which would lead to the greatest disaster, not only to ourselves, hut to the whole world.”

Rt. Hon. TL H. Asquith said: “It would he the worst possible nolicy for use to appear to regulate our naval construction by that of the United States.” He hoped that Hie House of Commons would not he induced to enter into this wasteful and criminal competition with those people with whom wo hoped to become permanent Allies. We ought only to build the ships that were necessary to provide against the risks of an interruption of international communications.

Mr Lambert contended that the Nev. ships proposed, are unnecsss«ii-y Mr Lloyd George, he said, ; s going to Washington as a “dove of neace, ’ le t the Government ‘was nevertheless building after-war dreadnoughts.

Sir T). McLean moved to reduce the naval 'vote by £IOOO as a protest against the extra construction. The vote, however, was inally carried. CONFERENCE NAVAX DECISION. (Received This Day at 10.15 a.in.) LONDON. \ugnst 4. The naval defence resolution passed by the Imperial Conference reads— That while recognising the necessity for co-operation among tln> various portions of the Empire, to provide such naval defence as may prove to l/e essential to -Security, and while holding that equality with naval strength of any other power is the minimum suggested for that purpose this conference is of opinion that the method and extent of such co-operation are matters for final determination of the several parliaments concerned and any such recommendations thereon should be deferred until after the coming conference on disarmament. The substance of this resolution has already been communicated, but' the text was only disclosed to-day.

I Commenting, Hon. Ainery said the resolution would be regarded in future years as an important landmark, iriike in the history of the British naval policy and development- of imperial cooperation. ft dealt with the course developments of the future and did not directly affect the policy of the Admiralty or average development, jhe Prime Ministers had to keep in view, not only the great problems of naval strategy, which had to be considered by themselves, hut the -(institutional issues involved in the Imperial co-opo-rntion and still wider issues of international relations.