ADMIRALTY DEFENDED.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3348, 28 November 1919, Page 3

ADMIRALTY DEFENDED.

NOT so BLACK AS PAIN'].‘LD. ‘ M LONDON, Nov. 9. - Mr Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for W’ar, in an ironical article in the Sunday Herald, intended as a de—“ fence of the Admiralty, discusses -the‘ recent criticisms of the navy, including statements made lb-y Lord Jellicoe and Sir Percy Scott. “These records,” -he says, “produce a sense of being plunged. into a nightmare, and would suggest that the most obvious dangers have been disregarded, that the Navy was Composed of defective and shamefully ill-supplied ships, in which the guns would not fire, the sights were missing, the shells éxvould not burst, and the torpedoes would not run true.’-’ '

Mr Churchill, 1:-ipsing into caricature depicts the consequential defeat of the Navy, the invasion of Great Britain, and the ruin of the Allies’ cause. He winds up d_rily:—“As a matter of fact, it did not turn out quite so badly. Despite our disgraceful neglect, incapacity_ and purblind stupidity, the German fleet at this moment is ~'beneath the waves in a British harbour. “The disparz’igment of the Navy,” Mr Churchill contirfues, “recalls that when the public was gloomingly inclined in war time, somebody wittily predicted that the British would probably win the war, and say that they lost it, while the Germans would lose, but say that they won. “Lord Jellicoe’s detached point or View curiouslq ilustrates the erroneous tendency to distinguish between the respollsibilities ofthe navy and the Admiralty. Both employed the same professional sc‘l‘6'fice, and all commanders. of the fleets arid flotillas belonged to the class of officers who a few years or months previously served at the Adrniralty, 01' filled high technical posts at Whitehall. “Nobody influenced to a greater extent than Lord Jellicoe the allegedly defective designs of the cruisers of the Invincible and Queen I\{[al«y classes which were sunk a'fiJutland.”