£18,000,000 WASTED.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 July 1917, Page 2

£18,000,000 WASTED.

STRAIGHT TALK BY BRITISH ADMIRAL. "A serious and disagreeable danger," was the description given to the submarine menace iby Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Hedworth (Meux, who was the principal speaker at the annual meeting held in Liverpool of the Mercantile Marine Service Association. In the course of his speech he said that for the first nine months of the war we were told the submarine menace was iwell in hand. "Well, of course, there was not a word of truth in it," commented Sir Hcdiworth. There were very few submarines and they 1 were not in hand the following year, and lie was sorry to say ihey were not in hand now. RIDICULOUS SHIPS. But what did the Admiralty of the day do? It was true they built a few destroyers and a few submarines, but they also wasted something like £lB,000.000 on building the most ridiculous crack-brained 'big ships that ever entered the mind of mortal man, ships some 700 feet long, something like aibout 30,000 tons, with a few big guns and no armor. If <they had not wasted the money and time on those ships they could have built at least another 100 destroyers, which would have placed us in a very much better way than we are at present. It was no use pretending that there could ever be a complete remedy for the submarine danger. The only way in which the menace) to his mind, could be chiefly alleviated was to try as far as possible—which he had no doubt the Admiralty was doing—to block the submarines into their own harbors.