The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is. incorporated the West Coast limes. FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 1931. BE PREPARED.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 June 1931, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is. incorporated the West Coast limes. FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 1931. BE PREPARED.

In the course of a reply to the wa»u of “The Armed Forces of the Crown” at a Royal Academy banquet, Louuon in . mid-May, the Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Roger Keyes, said we were a people slow to learn and quick to forget. We remembered our successes and victories, but we were so apt to forget the ever-recurring lessor ur history, which recorded with unfailing regularity the humiliations and doreats which we suffered when our anneu forces and maritime power were allowed to decline and decay because the political horizon was for the moment clear. There were people to-day, tu> they had always been, who could only regard our soldiers and sailors as professional mercenaries and an incentive to war. They forget the lor?g generations of honourable peace which we had enjoyed, thanks to the possession of armed forces of sufficient strength to safeguard our interests. They forgot that on our distant frontiers lived fierce, warlike peoples, to whom the tenets of Christian peace meant nothing—that the very life of these islands was dependent almost from clay to day onAeaborne food, raw materials, and oil. He was confident, however, that an overwhelming majority of British men and woweu recognised our armed forces as an insurance for peace and security, and would always gladly make sacrifices to ensure that a sufficient force was kept in being to police our Empire and its outposts and safeguard its sea communications, which were so vital to our life and prosperity. The last 12 years had been fraught with difficulties and marked by an intense desire to ban for over the curse and horror of war, which they, who had seen much of war, shared to the full. It was an ageold problem. In 1763, on the conclusion of the Seven Years War, the

preamble of the Peace Treaty of Paris ran: i “There shall be a Christian, universal, and perpetual pence.” At tnat time we possessed a powerful and victorious Fleet, commanded and manned by a splendid personnel. In a few short years that great legacy was dissipated. Wo drifted into the next war almost disarmed, suffered terrible humiliation, and the next peace was signed in one of the blackest hours of British history. If disarmament was the solution of the distressing problem all wore so anxious to solve, no one could say that we had not given a .generous lead in that direction; we had also given a lead in the right and proper use of armed forces in peace' time, and in that connexion he would like to recall an episode which won for us the unstinted and outspoken gratitude of the nationals of every civilised country. He referred to the timely arrival of British troops and ships at Shanghai when a vast cosmopolitan colony was in immediate and desperate danger. It was. the l'eadihess of otit armed forces which averted bloodshed and prevented war and incidentlly reestablished our waning prestige in th« Far East,