"SHEER FANTASY."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 274, 11 April 1913, Page 5

"SHEER FANTASY."

PROPOSED' NAVAL HOLIDAY. / GERMAN VITUPERATION OF MR. CHURCHILL. (Sydney Sun Special). . . London, March- 30. The pan-German press, which, is mainly responsible for anti-British fecjjing in Berlin, is outdoing itself In its vituperation of Mr. Churchill, whose suggestion of a naval holiday is frankly believed to be a foul plot to cheat Germany, and under the guise of a friendly agreement to bring her under the British yoke. One Berlin paper, Die Post, says: MrChurchill's speeches are always distinguished by inconsistency !tnd insincerity. This occasion made it particularly easy for his critics to dispose of him. We are not going to overthrow thciyml law at the behest of glib-tongiied, blistering British Ministers." .

The Post describes Mr. Churchill's proposals not merely as a "sheer fantasy and of most grotesque and absurd sort," but as something much worse. Count von Reventlow, Germany's foremost naval critic, writing in the Deutsche Tageszeitung, accuses , the First Lord of a felonious attempt to influence the section of Gorman opinion that opposed naval expansion. Mr. Churchill's critics,.declares the Count, are disloyal and insincere.

The Taglische Rundschau ascribes what it calls Mr. Churchill's passionate lovemaking to Germany to a fear thnt the cost of armaments will strangle Britain before it does Germany. The paper figures it out that when Germany has (51 Dreadnonglvtv Britain must have 130. and adds, "for Englishmen to proceed will bleed them white. The prosnect is one calculated to blanch even Jfr. Churchill's brazen face."

Many of the more reputable German papers have not ret commented upon the proposal. The Lokal Anzeiger, although onposed to the suggestion, is content to sav nothing stronger than that it is a Uton'nn idee.

One no'nt made bv Cor>"anv is thnt a naval holida.v tc.iv would v nt e « crisis in +b o s lnnbnildi«g indn«trv of both ennntTiea. e,,d "onM «ir.P', T ,+ Hf-'nflicte.l stroke of economic naralvsis. For this reason 'done Mr. Churchill's proposal is regarded ns impracticable,