“NEVER NEARER WAR”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 259, 23 January 1928, Page 1

“NEVER NEARER WAR”

ADMIRAL’S FEARS PENALTY OF EFFICIENCY NEW YORK, Saturday. In a symposium on the naval programme during a public luncheon, Colonel Roosevelt, a son of the former President, said: “We hope for no more wars, but we know they cannot be avoided, when there is a major cause like foreign trade, on which the life of. the nation depends. “Arbitration will not hold our prosperity. It now depends upon finding markets abroad for our goods. The speaker demanded a navy equal to Britain’s. Admiral C. P. Plunkett said: “The penalty for . efficiency is war. War is inevitable, so long as we travel along the lines we are travelling on to-day. And what of it? We are not going to leave this heritage of George Washington to luck.” “If I read history correctly, thi' country is nearer war than ever before, .because its commercial position to-day places us in-competition with other great commercial nations. If you do net want war, be a worm and withdraw into the nearest hole in the earth.” Mr. A. P. Andrew, Republican member cZ Congress, said he approved the naval programme, “to support our national policies, which are only reluctanly recognised by other powerful Go-* crumerts.” Mr. F. H. La Guardia, Socialist, member of the House of Representatives for New York, attacked the programme on the ground that it meanwar, and that other countries were already suspicious of it* —A. and N.Z.