THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1907. AMERICA AND JAPAN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8519, 27 August 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1907. AMERICA AND JAPAN.

The seriousness of the proposal to send the United States Atlantic fleet to the Pacific is pointed out by the New York correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald. For coal alone the cost of the trip round the Horn will be 2,000,000 dollars, and the total bill is expected to amount to about 7,000,000 dollars. No sane administration could possibly hope to justify such an enormous outlay to the carping critics of Congress by anything but a purpose much more serious than mere drill exercise not to speak of the risk of sending such an armada, even in favourable summer weather, round the Horn. The correspondent's view is that the friction with Japan led to a move ! being made which would otherwise have been postponed until the opening of tne Panama Canal. Sooner or later the United States naval force in the Pacific must be increased in support of the American claim for a just share in the affairs of what will soon be the world's busiest ocean. The belief of the authorities at Washington is that if Japan should be rash enough to go to war, she would find herself over-matched eventually in a most costly and humiliating struggle. It is contended that hardly any of Japan's great ships are properly armed, owing to the fact that the guns nearly worn out in the late war have not been replaced. The Washington authorities believe that the American navy is in the very pink of condition, and ranks next to the British. The Philippines and Hawaii might be taken, but war could not be carried 0:1 in America itself with success, for in six months a million men, well armed and well drilled, would be in the field. As 95 per cent, of American trade is mestic, a blockade of the ports would not be very serious; the real sufferers would be the foreign factories that depend on American raw material and the people over-seas vJtio consume American meat and wheat. Finally America has money. The surplus last year was 57.000,000 dollars. "In the presence of this vast sum, which can be spent annually without imposing a single cent of new tax, could any

patriotic statesmen refuse to vote it away to save us from 'the predatory Powers' of the older continents?" asks the correspondent.