GERMANY AND PEACE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 132, 13 September 1910, Page 4

GERMANY AND PEACE.

The German Press paid a great deal of attention to the statement concerning naval matters made by Mr. Asquith in the House of Commons a few weeks ago. The British Prime Minister remarked that experience had not justified the anxiety expressed in some quarters a year previously in regard to Germany's naval expansion. The acceleration of construction had not been as rapid as had been expected, and in 1913 Britain would have twenty-live Dreadnoughts and Germany possibly twenty-one. The estimate did not take count of the New Zealand and Australian Dreadnoughts and of the two Lord Nelsons, which some authorities assert are quite as powerful as the original Dreadnoughts. The Norddeutche Zeitung, a semi-oilicial organ in Berlin, says that in Germany Mr. Asquith's statement was regarded as " a frank proof that a gratifying change has taken place in public opinion on the other side of the Channel regarding Ger-man-British relations." ''Let diplomatists and armor-plate manufactures continue their game as long as they can." adds the journal, "but let them- leave out of it the people and public opinion, who are not concerned with the diplomatists and commercial patriots, but with the blood and possessions of two nations who wish nothing more ardently than to live in peace one with another." The Vorwaerts, a representative Socialist newspaper, declared that a majority of the members of the Reichstag would support an odicial proposal for the limitation of armaments. The Radical Morgenpost attacked the German Government for having thrown upon German public opinion the responsibility for the unwillingness to negotiate 'with Great Britain for the restriction of expenditure on preparations for war. "It is the duty of the' German people," it added, "to proclaim aloud the view they hold, and have for years held, on the ! subject of pacific efforts to bring about the restriction of armaments." The comments of the German press as a wholo were marked by a friendly tone towards Great Britain, and the advocates of disarmament have been drawing some encouragement from the fact.