ANGLO-GERMAN RIVALRY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 104, 31 May 1909, Page 4

ANGLO-GERMAN RIVALRY

AN AMERICAN VIEW. ONLY TWO RESULTS.. Mr. Lewis Nixon, on American battleship designer, who recently returned to New York from a trip tu "Germany and St. Petersburg, where lie completed a contract for a number of Russian tor-pedo-boats, has been interviewed on the probable issue of Anglo-German naval rivalry. Ho takes a frankly -alarmist view of the situation.

"I sec only two ways in 'which this contest can end," he says', "and one way in which, it k likely to end. One way would be for tlie two nations to con'tinue to match battleships until one of them becomes financially exhausted and is willing to give up and drop back to a plate in the list of second-rate Powers. Tlie other way is to fight it out." NO LIMIT TO SIZE.

"Is there any reason except national bankruptcy," asked the interviewer, "why Germany and England cannot go on building even greater battleships—in other worite, is there any insurmount-. able mechanical difflcultv!"

. "None ■whatever," Mr* Nixon replied. "I expect that the battleships that will be built ten years from now will far exceed in size and cost anything that is now afloat or projected.' There is no reason why even 40,000 or 53,000-ton warships could not be built, anT such Ship? will Se Imilt, provided there be io revolution in the nnfthods of naval warfare that would make them useless." "WIRELESS" BATTLES.

"W'lmt kind of a revolution in naval warfare might have sued a result!" _ ''Well, here's one kind. Did you notice a. little item in, the newspapers wlrcn the American Fleet was crossing the Atlantic on Ms world trip about a man who had been injured by a. current of electricity that was passing between 'two .wireless telephones ?" Very few persons'read it, because it wa.s tucked away oil the inside pages, but in my opinion it was very Important. To ire it suggested the idea that a discovery 'nraj- be made any day that will enable one Ibftttlrtsliip to discharge a tremendous volume of electricity at a s'hip pci-taps five miles distant and instantly kill everyone on board.

Marconi las shown that electricity can Tie senS without wires, and all that remains ito lie done before the elcctrio 'bubtleship can become, a fact is to discover how to direct the current so that Jt will go only one way and not kill those aboard the ship that sends it. I believe that this will be done some time."

BANKRUPTCY OR WAR. ' Mr. Nixon summed ltp his view of Olic .'filiation by Racing that the <buUd- )"!; of tli e firsts Dreadnought gave Germany an opportunity, wMeh she seems to lie trying to grasp, to wrest from England her naval supremacy and to take with it her foreign tirade. With 'battleships costing £2,000,000 apiece, and neither nation willing to be outdone by the other, the result, whatever it may be—bankruptcy or war—<-aonot> in life opinion, b 0 long delayed. Personally, he expects "to see within five v'eaw the most terrific war in the world's history between England and Germany."