BRITAIN’S NAVAL POLICY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8345, 4 February 1913, Page 8

BRITAIN’S NAVAL POLICY

NEED FOR SEA POWER HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT OF ARMAMENTS. , REVIEW BY LORD LIVERPOOL. Hie Excellency the Governor was entertained at luncheon yesterday by the New Zealand Club, of which he has become patron in succession to Lord Islington. The Hon. C. M. Luke, M.L.C. (president), on behalf of the members, extended a hearty welcome to Lord Liverpool. . , , Lord Liverpool, in returning thanks for the cordial reception given him, said it was a great pleasure to him to accept the invitation of the club ana say something to so many representatives of the commercial community or this city. They knew it was a very difficult thing for a person who stood in the shoes ho stood in to make any kind of address without, skating on thin ice and at the same time combine his speech with something that was palatable or interesting. However, the topic he had chosen was The absolute necessity of sea power to a nation that has oversea dominions and the development of armaments,” which he hoped to make interesting to them. (Applause.) He took as his starting point a period analagous to the French 'Revolution for two reasons: (1) To show how impossible it is for a great Power to ignore the trend of events which take place in nations and which must vitally affect her policy, both financially and commercially; (2) that it was about this period, viz., 1787, that a small colonising expedition was sent to Australia and gave immortality to an obscure Minister by calling the settlement Sydney. CHAPTERS OF HISTORY. “Let us consider the position,” con tinned his Excellency. “At the time England had been engaged in a long and inglorious war with America; her troops were prisoners or blockaded in America; her credit was exhausted; her fleet was unprepared, and she had reason to fear attack from the united navies of France and Spain. This was in 1778. In December, 1783, the great Commoner —the younger Pitt—assumed the First Lordship of the Treasury, and so commenced a supreme and unbroken Ministry which was to last for seventeen years. The student of history realises what a colossal task he was undertaking. In the last eight years the country had seen political degradation reach its climax. Fox, who had denounced North, now sided with him—the acuser had eat down with the accused. The country was sick of the old methods. They saw a young man, rich with eloquence, heir to an immortal name, untainted in character, spotless in life, who showed the very first day he met Parliament as Minister a supreme disdain for the material prizes of life. The country recollected ithat in a few months the elder Pitt had raised England from the ground and placed her at the head of Europe. Might not something be hoped for from his son ? No Minister can ever wish for war. Apart from the inseparable dangers to onr constitution and our commerce, his own position suffers detrimentally. He has to face not the excitement of the field, but domestic misery and discontent, the burden of taxation, and the unpopularity of the sacrifice which all war entails. If this is true of any Minister, with how much greater force does it apply to Pitt ? The task ho had set himself in 1784 was to raise the nation from the exhaustion of the American struggle, to repair her finance, and to strengthen by reform the foundations of her constitution. He required at least fifteen years to give full benefit to his financial reforms. His enthusiasm was all for peace, retrenchment, and reform. Had he been able to cany out his ideas—had France only left him alone—he would have been far and away the greatest Minister England has ever seen. FOUGHT FOR AN IDEAL.

But what happened? He who had fought for his ideal, peace, as the best means of raising his country to the first place in the concert of Europe—for be it remembered in 1789 he was deaf to the shouts of rage at the convulsions in Prance, saying that France could settle her internal affairs as she wished—in 1793 found .himself unable to stem the tide. The French Convention declared war on the rulers of Great Britain and Holland, and the people were shouting for war. It was not the moment, in any event, which ho would have selected. By a curious coincidence England had a series of bad harvests from 1789 to 1802, of which 1792 was the worst. The question was why, if he was so averse to war, did Pitt not resign P Because be could not have avoided war, and he know that if he did not face the inevitable he would be succeeded by a Minister who had not his capabilities and would be far more warlike in his temperament. With indefatigable energy he faced the crisis. The notable points of these years as regards the conduct of the war and of foreign policy were these: Pitt’s two endeavours to combine Europe against the common enemy—his constant anxiety for peace—the four direct overtures which he made with this object between 1793 and 1801, the uniform success of the enemy on land and the uniform triumph of our arms at sea. Pitt’s policy was twofold—it was a naval and colonial policy. It meant that while Pitt was subsidising the armies of the Continent against France, our Navy being supreme we were able to have our troops operating with success in India against Tippoo Sahib, preventing Napoleon from over-running Egypt by Nelson’s victory of the Nile in 1798, capturing practically the whole of the French possessions in the West Indies. And so we pass to the last phase of the war, the crushing of the French and Spanish navies at Trafalgar and making the naval strength of England supreme, which enabled us to convey our troops safely during the Peninsular War, and at the same time guard their supplies and base. Let it not be forgotten that this supremacy was gained by the forethought of the Great Commoner. UNQUESTIONED SUPREMACY. And so we pass to the second phase embraced by a period from after the Peace of Paris in 1815 to the present time. Wo have seen the supremacy of our great Navy unquestioned during the great war, and we find that supremacy maintained during the years of peace, that is to say, of peace so far as we were concerned with reference to Europe, only broken by the Crimean War in 1853. It was the vital essential to ns for the maintenance of our Indian Empire during the Sikh wars of the forties, the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the China War of the sixties, may I say the unfortunate strife of the same decade in these islands, the maintenance of our authority in -'■'vpt during the stormy period which began in 1882, not to end finally till .1893 bv the crushing of the Khalifa.

Oor very life blood lay in maintaining our lines of communication during the struggle of 1899 to 1902. That is whal the Navy has meant to our country and to her colonies. It is a great aentage and one of which we are all proud, and one which the British nation intends to maintain, not as a menace, out as a safeguard for the peace of the world. And as we have tins regarding ourselves, let us compare it when the question is associated with other nations. Why did Spain so signally failed in 1898 against America, and lose practically all her colonies? Firstly, because she had not considered her colonies an asset in the strongest sens© of the word, and secondly, she had not the sea power, when the hour of stress came, either to meet her enemy or to guard her lines of communications. Take the BussoJapanes© War of 1904. Again, what made it possible for Japan to land her armies, with practically no opposition, in Korea ? Simply because she was omnipotent on the sea. These are two great examples of to-day, of nations other than ourself, ■ where the supreme power of the sea has been vital to their undertakings and development. Let it not be forgotten that both of them are great commercial nations, to whom the expansion of their commerce and outlet for their population is a necessity. NAVAL EVOLUTION.

Briefly let us ponder over the great evolution which has taken place, both in ships and material since the navy, as we Know it now, was a reality. We know the Great Harry of Henry VlH.’s reign was looked upon as a ship of prodigious pretensions, and yet she was probably smaller than the greater number of our smallest coasting sailing vessels. Then we see the navy evolving from a series of what we should now term piratical or filibustering expeditions against the Spaniards in, the West Indies in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and the rise of such names as Frobisher, Drake, Lord Howard of Effingham, and Hawkins, men of great daring, who were the mainstay in defeating the invasion of 1588, but whose ships were unwieldy and difficult to navigate, and whose guns were often more dangerous to the ships themselves than to the enemy. Then we pass thrpugh a period which was not altogether to our credit, except during the time of Cromwell, when we know the British ships of war were the terror of the seas. Gradually, with the commencement of the eighteenth century, the ships developed, not only in building capacity, but also in armament. The classes as we know them varied little between the early years of the eighteenth century and the end of the fifties and beginnings of the sixties of the nineteenth century. The largest ships .were the first-rate three-deckers, carrying 90 to 120 guns—in one case was there a four-decker the Santissima Trinidad, which fought at St. Vincent and Trafalgar, and finally foundered there. The third-rate frigates had 50, 46, and 36 guns. The secondrate two-deckers varied in armament, as 60, 74, and 80-gun ships, the fourth-raters, corvettes, consisting of 26-gun shi*)s, carried on a flush deck, and the brigs, 10 and 16-gun vessels. Of the latter class perhaps the less said the better. THE ERA OF STEAM.

With, the era of steam came the changes of oonv.orsion from sailing ships to auxiliary screws, and the fleets of the Baltic and Black Sea in the Crimean war to a certain extent consisted of these ships. But what this war did prove conclusively was that as the armaments had improved it was absolutely essential that some form of vessel should be devised to resist the penetrating power of the projectiles which were destructive in such a marked degree to a wooden structure. And so in the early sixties commenced the era of the iron ships, to develop later into steel ships', which is the greatest change in shipbuilding the world has witnessed. The classes of ships of war changed, the old name ceased to be, and from them emerged battleships, cruisers of various classes, .torpedo-de-stroyers, torpedo-boats, and, more lately, submarines, to be followed, shall we suggest, by air cruisers. One gun of to-day, fired from a battleship, can throw a projectile a great deal more than equal to all the Broadsides of the Victory. And the size of our great guns is continuing to increase by leaps and bounds—the 10-inch gun, then the 12-inch, now the 13.5-inch, and there are suggestions of a 16-inch gun. And what of the size of the ships? It is difficult to measure the battleship of to-day with the wooden ship, because the style of measurements are different, but this we can do: We can measure the battleship of the eighties and those of to-day. A 12,000-ton ship was looked upon as a monster—l am beginning to think we shall live to see a 40,000ton battleship. I know the great commercial steamers have now exceeded this figure, but at present the construction size of battleships is still in 20,000 to 28.000-ton ships. When you see a battleship of the Dreadnought class passing the Victory in Portsmouth harbour you realise ‘what size really is;

and if you again mention the Great fiarry she in her turn would only be equal to a steam pinnace—if as large—■ of on© of our modern battleships. In size of crews there is not so much dif-> ferenoe. The three-deckers usually carried crews varying from 600 to 780 men; the crews of to-day of the Dreadnought class are, if anything, slightly under this figure. And let us lastly turn to the question of expense. Th« cost of a modern battleship is 2} millions —a three-decker of Nelson’s time about £BO,OOO to £90,000. ENGLAND’S BURDEN. Is it not sufficient to say this : Thafc the time has arrived when it is fully realised by her daughters that England can no longer bear this burden alone, and hence the ready offers of assistance extended to her from all the oversea Dominions—offered in the sure and certain hope that in the day of difficulty we, who all belong to the Empire, shall not be found wanting. (Applause.) In conclusion, there are few here who will in one sense consider themselves sentimentalists, though all will find themselves allied with the true definition of the word in reality. Pitt rests in that old sanctuary in which so many of our great men lie, and over his body stands a monument graven by cunning hand. It depicts the Great Commoner standing as ho used to da when‘first Minister in the land, his hand outstretched, and it seems to betoken that though not with us in the flesh he bids us, “ To be of good cheer, work together, and not be dismayed.” (Loud applause J