£57,000,000 FOR NAVY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 306, 17 March 1928, Page 1

£57,000,000 FOR NAVY

ECONOMY IN ESTIMATES POLICY OF REPLACEMENT Bu Cable. — Press JLsaociafios.— Coj>r riuh:. LONDON, Thursday. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. W. C. Bridgeman. in the House of Commons, said that the Naval Estimates for the current year, £57,300,000, was a reduction of £1,150,000 on what was spent last year. There was in addition £1,280,000 less in appropriations in the Air Force. Therefore it had been necessary to economise to the extent of about £2,000,000. He called attention to the additional expenditure of £195,000 on the Fleet air arm. So far from starving the air side the Admiralty was making extra provision, although they wve cutting down in other directions. There was a vote of £48,000,000 for the effective services. He referred with satisfaction to the fine work achieved by the Navy ir China during the very disturbed tim a through which that country had been passing. Dealing with the question of general naval policy, Mr. Bridgeman said it was one of replacement. This year the Government was dropping one cruiser out of three and was inserting provision for four additional sloops. For the two years 1927 and 1925, instead of having six cruisers, the ' would only lay down three. So far they had no idea of altering next year’s programme. That would coim up for consideration by the Minister who then presented the estimates. POSTPONEMENT RISKY It would he a very risky thing to go further than the Government had done in postponing replacements, t*>cause In a few years there would l>e more rapid obsolescence in cruisers and there would be more necessity for spending money on replacements. These replacements would be necessary, moreover, at the same time as the possibility would arise of replacing battleships. The Government’s reason for dropping three cruisers was not that tney were not satisfied that this country had done its full share in disarmament. America had made a very generous contribution to the limitation of armaments and had scrapped something like 500,000 tons of ships built or building before the Washington Conference was held. However, B >tain had voluntarily scrapped tonnage amounting to 1,300,000 tons, and since then had scrapped about the same tonnage as America. —A. and N.Z.