CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 June 1916, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE "MYTHICAL" GERMAN GUN'S. The fight in the North Sea has enabled the British Admiralty to assure the public that the Germans produced "no surprises,'' and that "the mythical German 17in guns failed to materialise." The theory that the Germans were mounting huge guns upon ships designed to take guns of smaller calibre has been hotlv discussed at Home for many months. The Glasgow Herald has criticised this theory with a certainty which experience appears to justify "One of tin- bogeys perpetually Haunted in our eyes," said the Herald in January last, "is the awful things which Von Tirpitz is secretly preparing within the seclusion of the Kiel Canal for the destruction of the British Fleet when he emerges for 'the Day.' This bogey has been again resuscitated in the timeworn garb of the secret re-armament of the German Navy with colossal 17in guns, which are to blow the British Navy into smithereens. This is n particularly insidious form of scaremongering. The British nation is very 'get-at-able' on the Navy; the appeal to our curiosity and credulity is thereby accentuated. -Oh! the hidden dogs: I was sine they were up to some, game all the time; what's our Navy been doing';' The> scare has on this occasion received the imprimatur of a question ii: 'Parliament, begging for assurances ollicially that the British Xavy is re:illy not to be caught napping and is prepared for this danger of the re-aniuuient of the German Navy."