DEFENCE, NOT DEFIANCE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7981, 8 March 1906, Page 7

DEFENCE, NOT DEFIANCE.

BRITAINS* SEA POWER NO MENACE TO PEACE. Selden wrote that a British inau pf-war was the beat negotiator iu Enrope; she always speaks to the point, and ia easily understood. The British navy'of the present' day has been speaking very much to the point, but in n quite different sense to that which Selden had in mind. At Brest and a* Portsmouth; at Swinemuude and at New York; at Lagos and at Leghorn; at Sasebo and at Copenhagen has the glorious Crimson Cross fluttered during the past year xa all the placid contentment of goodwill and better understanding. Therefore, the suggestion that our mighty fleet, instead of being the world's best guarantee for peace, is an incessant challenge to the other powers by its very magnitude, has been quiotly but deeply resented throughout the wholo uavjr, Nor is there any prophetic daring in the assurance that Englishmen as a whole, with just sufficient exceptions to accentuate the vast prepoderanoe of unanimity, join in this sen D e of irritation at the quite new interpretation which is now being bestowed upon the role of the country's proudest heritage. There is no need to touch upon the politiual motives which seem to have actuated the suggestion that oar, "bloated armaments" are a menace to peace. The navy that was left to us by Nelson is no party question. Any attempt to reduce it to such in the past has signally oonrted disaster. STRENGTH AND ITS REASON. Why is our navy to-day so numerically overwhelming lis opposed to the fleet of any other Power? We built what Tennyson so happily terms our island greatness upon our supremacy on the inviolate sea. Sinoe the day when this country failed to produce suflaoiont fruits from her soil to feed her ever-grow-ing millions the meaning ,of sea supremacy took a much sterner significance than any mere pride of heroic achievement. When old Trorap swept the Channel with a broom at his masthead , the sturdy English husbandmen a few leagues inland were tilling the ground in blissful ignorance of all that was happening and there continued to be as much wheat, beef, and mead as the country wanted. But let the same conditions of things rendered conceivable by the "plea for disarmament—-occur again to morrow, and the key of our larder would be in the .hands of our foes. PLURAL-POWER STANDARD. The naval policy of England has alwayß-been one of response to foreign developments. Our Admiralty have unfailingly borne in mind a hypothetical objective and based a . plural Power standard upon the programme of this possible combination. Why so? Not because «e want to flght any other nation, but because we want to effectually provide against any other nation fighting us. What do my figures show me? That during the past decade Germany has doubled, and the United States trebled, the ratio of annual naval expenditure as compared with this country; that. France and Russia, at the very time that we are'outting down our Navy Estimates, are enormously increasing theirs; and that Japan and Italy are also travelling along the same road of militant expansion. Therefore, in the words of Voltaire, "Let messieurs the murderers begin. 1 ' Britain has more to lose and, more to gain by either sacrificing or maintaining her dominion of the deep than ail the other Powers. Hence she should surely be the last of them all to begin pulling off the gloves. Idyllio talk about the noble role of leading disarmament is all very pretty, but the age ia not yet when we may break away from the stern realities of life. The soenes that ara being enacted in Russia to-day should teach us that the breast of mankind is not yet soothed beyond the lust of bloodshed. The ever-swelling Navy Estimates that are being framed by foreign Powers prove what degree of sincerity rests in the period ioal muttering* about disarmament. No; to-day more than ever of yore the surest way to preserve peace is by being instantly prepared for war. And he who says that the British navy is other than a most paoiflo influence in the world's affairs utters a deliberate untruth. —Herbert Russell.