THE COST OF ARMAMENTS.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 31, 6 October 1911, Page 16

THE COST OF ARMAMENTS.

The "Argus" has seldom produced anything more gorgeously funny than a sub-leader which appeared last week on the subject of battleships. The intellectual apparatus of the writer has evidently received a severe shock from a statement made in that ultra-revolu-tionary organ, the "Pall Mall Gazette/ According to the "Gazettej" it is likely that tlie Dreadnoughts ! .{there are now 92 in existence, of which Britain possesses 27) will shortly be superseded not by "super-Dreadnoughts," larger and more expensive, but by smaller and lighter ships. But the revolution is not to proceed to an extravagant degree. "The calibre of the guns is to be at a neAV maximum of 15 inches." The Dreadnoughts already in existence have ost at least £160,000,000 merely to build. This,;thinks the Argus, is a bit stiff. "All the same," continues the bellicose writer, "the thought of cost cannot entirely govern the question for any nation,' least of all for the British Empire. Whatever is best in naval strength must be built and maintained, for its price Avill ahvays be small in comparison Avith the A'ast interests *rtsr navy protects." There you haA r e it in a nutshell, the glorious gospel of capitalism. The price of armaments, in money and human life, "will ahvays be small in comparison Avith the A r ast interests our navy protects." And so, Avar remain an eternal necessity, Avere it not that happily the Avorkers of the world are ceasing to accept the capitalist vieAV, and realising that there are other and "vaster" interests than even those "which our navy —namely, the ideals of human justice and brotherhood, Avdiich capitalism consistently flouts.— Melb.