The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, June 22, 1909. THE COLONIES AND SEA SUPREMACY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 462, 24 June 1909, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, June 22, 1909. THE COLONIES AND SEA SUPREMACY.

The Fortnightly Review, the ablest of all magazines in its criticism of foreign affairs, has a very powerful article in a recent issue on the rivalry for sea-power amongst the nations, and the tremendous issues at stake. It says ; “We need not count the colonial Dreadnoughts before they are hatched, but it is plain that the Sea League of all the Britons is essential to Imperial unity. If this movement develops, as we think it must, things may be done which would be impossible to the island standing alone. The eleven millions of the white inhabitants of Greater Britain are richer, head for head, than the people of the Mother Country. If they imposed upon themselves —and nothing like so much is anticipated or expected as yet—a proportionate share of the naval expenses of the Empire, we should in a few years have a couple of squadrons of Dreadnoughts. For Canada could provide four ; the Commonwealth and New Zealand and South Africa together another four. These, with perhaps a squadron added by the Mother Country, might be a special Imperial Fleet, which would take upon itself many expensive duties now discharged by the home navy, and would leave the island to face with concentrated strength the problem of the North Sea. To make the colonial Dreadnoughts the core of an ocean fleet, visiting each of the States of the Empire in turn, might solve the question of distribution. We are realising what is the great alternative for our dominion. That alternative is union or death. The whole power of the German Empire, its industrial vigor, its military strength, the fleet that will menace us in the future, is deprived from the achievement ot unity. The Kaiser’s subjects are over 62,,000,000; there are neaily 90,000,000 of people in the United States, With our population of nearly 45,000,000, scarcely larger than that of France, and but moderately increasing, how a* an island standing alone can we hope to hold our own ? Minds are dull to the meaning of figures, but those we have given are of tremendous warning. If it is true that we must henceforth think in Dreadnoughts, it is equally true that we must think in decades. We must get ready for the conditions which will confront us before the first quarter of the century is out. Then Germany will have a population nearly twice as large as ours, with a vast trade and wealth, and with the power of seizing when she pleased—unless we alter our military arrangements—the low countries, thus enlarging her coastline, area, resources of all kinds, and securing an unrivalled naval base. The inteiest of the colonies in seapower is, if possible, greater in proportion than our interest in it, and they begin to feel that they must bear their share or perish. If they are willing to stand with us, if they are prepared to risk all for the Imperial idea,- if they dared to put it to the touch to win or lose it all, if they are ready for the utmost sacrifices before England’s flag goes down, then we shall keep the sea, and, Germany will destroy herself by the effect to secure a double supremacy which the world will never tolerate. These issues,-yet magnificent whatever the ultimate event. The attempt of Germany to seize the sea may well be, and will be, if we are strong, not the breaking, but the making of the British Empire.