WHERE ENGLAND LEADS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 21 September 1907, Page 3

WHERE ENGLAND LEADS.

The launching of the Bellerophon, our greatest battleship, is a fitting compliment to the appearance of the Lusitania. Great warships, like the possession of many battalions, are the best insurance against war and its consequences. We want many Bellerophons; and we want them soon, not spread in the building over a large number of years. One vessel of this class completed two years after laying down, turned out regularly with all improvements, should be our programme until we are strong enough once more to allay public anxiety and defeat any intrigue abroad. Peace Conferences may talk and resolve and amend, but the nation that possesses a do7.en Bellerophons is destined to be the arbiter of peace throughout the world. That has ever been Britain's rule. —London Express. The launch of the great battleship is always a grandiose and imposing spectacle! But the launch of the Bellerophon was something more. She has been built with a speed which has only once been surpassed in the whole record of the great navies, and that in the case of the Dreadnought. In less tlian . eight months from the date at which her keel was laid she has taken the water. Five years ago it was common for British warships of large size to linger eighteen months or two years on the stocks, while foreign warships were seldom launched in less than two years. For the improvement effected the present Admiralty deserve and will receive the fullest credit from the nation, which will not. at the same time forget the splendid skill displayed by Sir Philip Watts and his department in giving the Xavy vessels of such power—vessels which have inaugurated a new era in construction anil which in a sense have rendered all their predecessors obsolete. The success of the Dreadnought will be no longer disputed by those who have followed .Mr Frank Bullen's account of her behavior at sea, and noted his dispassionate tribute to her many magnificent qualities. The Bellerophon should be an even better vessel, since she embodies many improvements on her original. It is salutary evidence that the fire of interest within the nation is not waning when in the space of a few months its engineers devise and complete two such marvels as the Dreadnought and the Lusitania—London Daily Mail