AN AMERICAN VIEW OF ANGLOGERMAN RIVALRY.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9459, 31 May 1909, Page 2

AN AMERICAN VIEW OF ANGLOGERMAN RIVALRY.

ONLY TWO RESULTS. Mr Lewis Nixon, an American battleship designer, who recently returned to New York from a trip to Germany and St. Petersburg, where he completed a contract for a number of Russian torpedo boats, has been interviewed on the probable issue of Anglo-German naval rivalry. He takes a frankly alarmist view of the situation. “I see only two ways in which this contest can end,” be saya.“aud ®ne way in which it is likely to and. One way would be for the two nations to continue to match battleships until, one of becomes financially exhausted and is willing to give up and drop back to a place in the list of second-rate Powers. The other way is to fight it out.” NO LIMIT TO SIZE. , “la there any reason except national bankruptcy,” asked the interviewer, “why Germany and England cannot go on building even greater battleships —in other words ia there any insurmountable mechanical difficulty,? 1 ” “None 1 whatever,” Mr Nixon replied. “I expect that the battleships that Will be built ten years from now will far exceed in size and cost anything that is now afloat or projected, There ia no reason why even 40,000 or 50,000 ;ton warships could not be built, and sffich ships will be' built, provided there be no revolution in the methods of naval warfare that would make them useless.” “WIRELESS” BATTLES. “What kind of a revolution in naval warfare might have such a result?” “Well, here’s one kind. Did you notice a little item in the > newspapers whan the American Fleet was crossing the Atlantic on its world trip about a man who had been injured by a current of electricity that was passing between two wireless telephones?” Very few persons read it, because it was tucked away on the inside pages, but in my opinion it was very important. To me it suggested the a discovery may be, made any day that will enable one battleship to dieoharge a tremendous volume of electricity at a ship prehaps five miles distant and instantly kill everyone on board. “Marconi has shown that electricity can be sent without wires, and all that remains to be done before tbe electric battleship can become a fact is to discover how to direct the current so that it will go only one way and not kill those aboard"the ship that sends it. I believe that this will be done some time.” BANKRUPTCY OR WAR.

Mr Nixon summed up his view of the situation by saying that the building the first Dreadnought gave Germany an opportunity, which she seems to he trying to grasp, to wrest from England her naval supremacy and to take with itjher foreign trade. With battleships costing £3,000,000 apiece and neither nation willing to be outdone by the other, the result, whatever jit may he —bankruptcy or wav—cannot, in bis opinion, he long delayed. Personally, he expects ‘ to see within five years the most terrific war in the world’s history between England and Germany.”