The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1913. IMPERIAL DEFENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 296, 7 May 1913, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1913. IMPERIAL DEFENCE.

The question of Imperial defence is one of the most crucial political issues of the moment. England's first line of defence has, of course, always been the sea, and in the strengthening of this her dependencies oversea have not been slow to move. Mr. Illingworth, a broadminded Yorkshireman, who represents Shipley, according to a cablegram received yesterday, is evidently a strong navy advocate, but he has, like all other Tykes, his limitations. "Lord Roberts," he is reported to have said, "wanted a natipn of soldiers, the Navy League a nation of sailors. Another school of enthusiasts wanted to obscure the sun and moon with aerial flights. The Government relied on the navy,, and would'spare no efforts to maintain its efficiency." He was right and wrong. We want the navy, of course, and a navy that must be impregnable where the control of the sea and its high- j ways is concerned, but we must have our second line of defence too. It is idle to suggest that the conquest of the air is not going to have a very direct bearing on the armaments of the nations of the world, and it really seems as if Great Britain was just about awaking to this fact. She' admittedly controls the seas, and under'her new scheme of Territorialism she could put a fairly tespectable land force into action if neces- , sary, even if she had to, call upon the \ 200,000 resistants who are alleged to be : drilling in Ulster. But in aerial navigation she is badly'behind several of ! the European nations, notably Germany 'and France, and she cannot afford to ! linger jn this field of enterprise, No- \ thing is more certain than that in the immediate future if we have war it will be war in the air. The prospect is not ian assuring one from this point of view, but we doubt if the world will ever see another extreme war in which Great Britain will- he t engaged. The movements of the greater nations point , to peace, either by arbitration or by arrangement. Even the conquest of the air. need not frighten us, for hisJtory has shown' that every new means 1 of attack has' always been met by a I corresponding means of defence. We have gone from oaken three-deckerß to steel-clad battleships; we have sought the depths of the sea with torpedoes and submarines; we are bidding fair to fly' ' with the eagles in the air, but always and everywhere' right counter has .been met byi left counter, and the more we 'invent the more will brains and science invent in opposition. A mutual arrangement for an' international settlement would save the world a host of trouble and individual nations a mint of' expense. Meantime, of course, we must be. prepared for eventualities, but at the present rate of increase in the expenditure on our i armaments on land and sea and in the air, there is every prospect of half ' the nations finding themselves seriously embarrassed financially. The money has to be found,.arid'it.has to be found by the worker, and tn'e. question of defence has a much stronger bearing upon the labor" problem than many people have yet realised. If it were possible by mutual arrangement among three or four of the larger nations to restrict their army and navy estimates to some- . thing like normal conditions, and to 'J co-operate in the prevention of war, 1 1 the problem of the cost of living would |be settled once and for all. ,■