THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 1909. AUSTRALIAN NAVAL POLICY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3187, 12 May 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 1909. AUSTRALIAN NAVAL POLICY.

Admiral Poore's opinion tliaf, a destroyer flotilla would be "of tremendous advantage to Australia" is that of the Admiralty as well as of those Australians who oppose the proposal for a "navy" in contradistinction to a purely local defence force. At the Colonial Conference the Admiralty view was that the Commonwealth might do the navy real service by providing torpedo boats and submarines—the light .craft which a navy needs, but which it would be awkward to transport out here, where we lie "at the end of a string" as the Admiral says. At the same time such~a flotilla would supply Australia with about the most effective harbour defences it could have, provided it was acting in co-operation with efficient fixed defences. The "navy" scheme, however, goes far beyond this, and assumes a naval force of either cruisers or ocean-go-ing torpedo destroyers, which would meet the enemy on the high seas. The enemy would doubtless prefer that, if he could have the ordering of the encounter, because cruiser or destroyer would make his work much easier than if he had to chance what would happen to him for coming too near a port bristling with unknown resources in submarines and torpedo boats. That scheme seems to find favour with the Governor-Genera!, who argued at the St. George Society's banquet at Sydney recently, that Great Britain would gat far more from Australia in ships and men than in money. If he means th 3 kind of ships that have been proposed so far —the cruisers proposed to be borrowed by the Deakin Government and the ocean-going destroyers now ordered—they would not be much benefit to the Empire, which would be far better served by numerous, modernly-equipped flotilla to scare raiders from the ports. The two aspects of the subject, however, should not be confounded. Local defence is one thing, and Empire defence by the navy, which guards Australia as well as England, another. It must be recognised that the service Australia gets from the navy is vitally necessary and that the Commonwealth subsidy makes a very paltry return for it. .