PACIFIC DEFENCE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 4, 5 June 1913, Page 5

PACIFIC DEFENCE

'-ipjSTRAWAX CRITICISM.

THE MOSQUITO UNIT.

By Cable—Press Association—Copyright, Sydney, June 4.

Referring to the Hon. jas. Allen's guarded statement, the Telegraph says that Mr. Allen's present hints seem to indicate that he favors the separate unit policy as at first propounded by the Ward Government, and then virtually abandoned. New Zealand has a comparatively small population, and is to a serious extent isolated. Whether New Zealand can afford anything more than a mosquito fleet, which Mr. Allen repudiates, is, to say the least, questionable, and if New Zealand cannot provide for and maintain anything better than a mosquito fleet, then as the partner of Australia and Canada in keeping the Pacific for Britain it will not count for much.

Per Press Association. Auckland, Wednesdav.

When the Sydney Telegraph's cabled comments were brought under Mr. Allen's notice, the Minister said that the Ward Government never advanced the i separate unit policy, but suggested a direct contribution made to the Imperial Government, to be expended as the fir? l tish Admiralty thought fit. He (Mr. Allen) declared that this was a very different thing to the separate unit policy. He could not understand the reference to the mosquito fleet, as he understood it was a fleet of submarines and torpedo boat destroyers adapted for the defence of the coast and harbors of Great Britain.