FRENCH NAVAL CHAOS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3209, 8 June 1909, Page 3

FRENCH NAVAL CHAOS.

Extraordinary revelations continue to be made about the state of the French Navy. The Commission now enquiring into the condition of the service discovered recently that at Toulon there was no reserve of ammunition. Two battleships on the Mediterranean station were useless owing to boiler defcets, caused in one case by violation of naval reg»lations. On another battleship a 12-inch gun burst last year during practice, and has not yet been replaced, whilst this ship and two others have been waiting for two years for their complements of 3 7in guns, for repelling torpedo boats. In the meantime smaller guns have been given to the ships, though they are practically useless for the purpose. Worse still, another battleship has for a year had no ammunition in her magazines for firing against torpedo craft. This, be it remembered, is the active Mediterranean squadron, the first line of French'naval defence, and the pick of the fleet. Each vessel was found to be short of her complement by 100 men. If this is the state of the active squadron, that of the reserve squadron may be imagined. Altogebter ther. is a shortage of 15,000 meon. A Paris correspondent says there is complete disorganisation in the arsenals and joast defense. On paying a surprise visit to Cherbourg-recently, the Miniser of Marine found that of 340 men who should have been on duty in the coastguard force, only ISO were there. The designs of the six huge armoured cruisers now being built have been constantly changed since the work was put in hand; there have been 180 changes in the 250 paragraphs of the original orde*. It is estimated that only 28 out of 37 cruisers, and 34 out of 162 torpedo boats, are fit for service. "Broadly speaking, the French Navy needs money and honest hard work to refit it. The hospitals are without stores, the arsenals have insufficient ammunition, the guns are not all on the ship o , the ships themselves are many of them unfit for service, and were France to bo involved in war to-morrow, her navy would be almost useless."