THE GERMAN DANGER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 99, 24 May 1909, Page 4

THE GERMAN DANGER.

MOST POWERFUL FLEET IN THE WORLD. BRITAIN'S RUDE AWAKENING. (New Zealand Times' Correspondent.) London, April 2. What Conservatives call the national peril, and what Liberals' call the Navy scare, continues to dominate the public mind to an extent without parallel since tbe early days of the Boer War. All the delects of the party system become glaringly apparent at such a time as this. While one set of papers and politicians is telling the public that the very life of the Empire is imperilled, another set is just as busily engaged in pooh-poohing. the whole affair. If you are a Couservativc you believe the facts and figures of the one set, if you arc a Liberal you swear by the other set; and if you arc neither, you probably give the whole thing up in despair as a hopeless tangle ] of contradictions, distortions, rumors, recriminations, and enigmas beyond the power of any private individual to unravel. DREADNOUGHTS. Jiut out of the din and turmoil of party strife emerge certain facts of the gravest import. The first is that the evolution of the Dreadnought type of battleship has rendered other classes of warships out of date. Henceforth the strength of rival navies will be measured ill Dreadnoughts. Following un this is the second fact referred to by Sir Edward Grey in the Naval debate in the House last Monday in these words:

A now situation is created liy the German programme. When it is com-' pletcd Germany, a groat country close lo our own shores, will have it ileot of thirty-threw Dreadnoughts, and that fleet will he the most powerful which the world has ever yet seen. It imposes on us the necessity of rebuilding the whole of our fleet." That is the situation. ALL EUROPE EXDAXGERED. The Foreign Secretary's outline of the situation is in itself suilieh-jit to justify all the s'tir that has been made' about the llritish Xuvy. Sir Edward Grey put the ease even more plainly. "Surely," he, said, ''it is obvious that'the whole of Europe is in the presence of a groat danger."

The danger for England lies in the ambitions of the German ruling class, and also in the: habitual tendency of tlie English people to under-ratv their opponents. It is difficult to make the English realise that Germany means business', and that slie is not only ambitious but formidable. She has a population of seventy millions, and every man has been trained to the use of arms. She has a great and growing trade, and a wonderful national capacity -ami training for organisation. She is the greatest military Power in Europe—and' she !s building a fleet which is to be "the most powerful which the- world, has ever vet seen.'' Why should we doubt that Germany intends to lie the predominant European Power? Uut there ai> plenty of Englishmen who pooh-pooh the notion and trust blindly lo their Xavv to pull them through somehow without'ally special effort or sacrifice on their part. Even now that Gvruianv has stolen a march on Hie British X.avy by secretly accelerating her programme and grcatlv increasing her capacity to build, it is difficult to convince a good many Englishmen thtit the whole affair is' not li dark design on the part of the Tariff Reformers in thi.- country! "FANCIED SECURITY."

1 The strongest criticism of the present state of niiprcpn redness j n England comes from a Socialist leader, Mr. Robert lilatchford. "We arc disunited," he says in this week's Clarion; "we are untrained; we are over-confident; we are strongly averse to war; we are still more strongly attached to our own pane anil freedom. We do not want to light, '.vc do not want to pay. nc do not want lo I worry. We are full of words, and we have not learnt that words are not deeds j and that figures are not facts." In marked contrast we have the Labor parly deprecating the Xaval crisis as "a panic engineered here for pnlilic.il I purposes." and objecting (o the "wave of impulse" which has led to the munilicviit offers of colonial aid. With extraordinary wroiig-'licaileilncss, they see in these offers a sort of insult' to the strength of the Mother Country. They know of no danger across the' (lerninri I Ocean, liecause th»Yy refuse to look for it. If England is to be lulled into a fancied security by words, s'he is likely to have a rude awakening later on. Fortunately there are not wanting signs that the country is awaking to a sense of the situation's needs. Tf the "wave of impulse" leads to a deeper sense of individual responsibility for national defence, it will mark a new epoch in the nation's history.