A NAVAL VISITOR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26628, 26 November 1947, Page 4

A NAVAL VISITOR

This week Dunedin will have as its guests the officers and men of the cruiser Bellona, the latest addition to the strength of the Royal New Zealand £Tavy. The friendliness and hospitality of the Dunedin people on such occasions have become a tradition among naval men in the Dominion, and all ranks in Bellona are assured of as warm a welcome as that which their predecessors have enjoyed. Social entertainments and sports matches have been arranged for them, ' and for the whole of their stay in port they are freely invited to identify themselves with the activities of the city. Bellona is a new ship. She was completed in 1943 and many of the lessons of modern warfare were incorporated in her construction before she was sent into action on the world’s seaways. But she is more than a symbol of changing ideas in naval warfare. She is—as the prefix to her name implies—a New Zealand ship, and to the people of New Zealand she is also a symbol of newly-accepted responsibilities. New Zealand has now become a naval power—small perhaps, but with great potential for development and promise of important stature in the

future. With the Commonwealth of Australia, co-partner in the Anzac Pact, New Zealand has undertaken commitments for the defence of certain strategic areas in the Pacific and to relieve the Mother Country of part of the financial burden that the cost of maintaining the security of the Empire involves. Whatever this cost may be in naval or other expenditure, New Zealand and Australia cannot quibble at it. To-day, more than at any time in her history," Great Britain must depend on the dominions and the colonies to provide the sinews of war as y/ell as peace, and since the dominions have elevated themselves to positions of equal partnership with Great Britain in the Commonwealth of Empire they are in honour bound to accept all the responsibilities of partnership. And at a time when economic necessity has enforced the reduction of Great Britain’s naval forces to a level that is regarded in some quarters as alarmingly weak there devolves upon the dominions an urgent obligation to maintain their own navies at full efficiency, Training

cruises such as the present one v being carried out by Bellona serve towards this end, but while her sister ship lies tied up at Auckland for lack of complement it cannot be said that New Zealand is shouldering the full share, of the responsibilities that were acknowledged in the Anzac Pact.