THE AUSTRALIAN NAVY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 277, 15 April 1913, Page 7

THE AUSTRALIAN NAVY.

THE SECOND DREADNOUGHT.

WHY IT IS WANTED.

Federal Ministers take a serious view of the portents foretelling a European Armageddon. During the last two years of North Sea concentration there remain.in Pacific waters only the ghosts of the old British squadrons, and an important consideration in support of the proposal to lay down a second superDreadnought for the Australian Navv is the present extreme weakness of 'the fleet that has been left by the Imperial authorities for the purpose of.guarding the Pacific.

By tin? arrangements made at the 1911 Naval Conference, New Zealand was removed from Uic sphere of the Australian fleet. It was arranged that on the completion of the Australian naval unit the Royal Navy ships should coal up and set their noses for New Zealand waters, where they were to be under Imperial control as an appendage of the China Station. North Sea concentration has, proceeded at such a pace that only jix British ships are left to make their departure, and of the sixtwo —the Fantome and the Seahrk —are merely survey ships, unarmed and nnarmoured. The four fightinz ships are the Cambrian. Pvramus, Psyche, and Torch. '[he Federal Government has not been informed whether' these ships are to cross the Tasman 011 Ist July, the date fixed for the assumption by' Australia of complete responsibility for the Australian Naval Station. It is presumed however, that New Zealand will have to b» content with these four warships, of which three are perilously near the scrapping stage. n,Pa,lß '- according to the Svdnev Sun that the Admiralty intends that the Australian fleet should take 011 prnetu'.M]lv the whole responsibility for South Pacific local defence, "This view," the paper savs, '"is strengthened bv the fact that the Auckland naval base is a poorly equipped establishment, and that 1 110 measures have been taken to make it readv for the accommodation of the navv originally contemplated. Further evidence n accumulating to show that the New Zealand waters are to be reparded .«s the moral responsibility of the Australian Navy until such time as the Australian merges into an Australasian Navy Hud the Admiralty kept to the old policy, the battleship New Zealand would have been permanently stationed m the Pacific. Since it is reouiml for the North Sea fleets it "erwnesi imperative for Australia to .Jiuld a second Dreadnought."