ONE EMPIRE, ONE FLEET.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 208, 22 January 1913, Page 6

ONE EMPIRE, ONE FLEET.

VISITING ADMIRAL'S OPINION. Auckland, January 19. The ideal of one Empire fleet outlined in Mr. Massey's statement was approved by Viee-Adiniral Tate in a conversation with a Star reporter yesterday. ViceAdmiral Tate, who lias just completed three years' service as Admiral Superintendent of the Portsmouth Dockyard, arrived in Auckland by the Maloja in continuation of a holiday tour which hj« b making of the world. As a sailor and a Briton he could conceive of no other method of naval administration than the one-Empire-one-fleet, principle. A prominent citizen, he remarked, had said to him. "Wo have given you a battleship, but we are getting nothing in return for it." Such a contention, in Admiral Tate's opinion, could not hold for one moment. There was one fleet, and it !was protecting the trade of the one Empire to which we all belonged. Ship? suitable for immediate requirements were stationed in various parts of the Empire, and it was just as much to the interest of New Zealand to support the naval power in the Noith Sea, or the Mediterranean, or where it was required, as it was to the interest of Britain to support the naval power in the Fa cine. There was. he thought, no other point of view from which to regard the question. New Zealand had. he thought, shown herself to be actuated in a marked degree by the Imperial ideal. '