BRITAIN’S NAVAL STRENGTH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1303, 26 September 1914, Page 4

BRITAIN’S NAVAL STRENGTH.

“ Yesterday the British fleet 1 entered upon its warlike task,” wrote Mr Archibald Hurd in a London paper on August 6th. “Though the main theatres are the North Sea and Channel, hostilities will be world wide in their character, if any enemy appears. It is a fortunate circumstance that on the very eve of the outbreak the Admiralty, on the advice of the war staff, strengthened several of the squadrons in the outer seas. First, a battleship—the Swiftsure —was sent to the East Indies; then xo new cruisers of the ‘City’ class —splendid, swift ships—were despatched to the Mediterranean, the Far East, and the Cape. Not during the past decade have the distant squadrons been anything like as strong as to day. Austria has hardly a vessel outside the Mediterranean, and Germany is so poorly represented that it is expected that her ships, confronted with hopeless odds, will immure themselves so as to avoid destruction. It is reported that the China Squadron, under the German flag, has already made for Kiau-Chau, and there it might decide to remain for the present. It comprises two armoured cruisers and three small cruisers. England and France possess a battleship—the Triumph —and four armoured and two small cruisers in these waters, not to mention many small craft, and in the offing is the whole Japanese Navy. Unless isolated German ships can break through from the North Sea and get across the trade routes in the Atlantic, we have apparently little to fear in the way of interference with our seaborne commerce, We are in superior strength everywhere at present. No ships can live without coal, and Germany has only one foreign coaling station—Kiau-Chau—and no friends. It is well to guard against undue optimism, but it is difficult at the moment to see where attack is to come from unless she can break through from the North Sea,”