THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1909. NAVAL INSURANCE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9537, 8 July 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1909. NAVAL INSURANCE.

The disastrous effect of the loss of naval supremacy by the Imperial Government would be so vast and so irretrievable that the most ordinary intelligence ought to real'se the necessity for adequate insurance against such a calamity. Apart from the incalculable injury which would be inflicted upon our political and sicial organisation, the commercial lassalore would be ruinous. The United Kingdom might be the chief sufferer, but New Zealand would find itself without markets for its produce, or employment for its workmen, and would have to adjust its industries by slow and painful processes to an entirely new order of things. It is, therefore, manifest that the first Imperial duty of every part of the Empire is to take steps to effect an adequate and sufficient naval insurance. Lord Charles Beresford claims that a building programme involving beI tween £55,000.000 and £60,000,000 [ is immediately called for if we are to make the naval situation what it ought to be. As the population of the British States is about as many millions, this enormous sum would be covered by a contribution averaging ona pound per head, surely not an impossible sum to pay for release from the uneasiness excited by the growing sense of our unreadiness. This uneasiness has been scoffed at in some quarters, but there is overwhelming evidence to show that the time has gone by when we C3n treat all suggestion of overthrow as due to a morbid imagination. Every Imperial statesman of repute and standing agrees that our Imperial Navy is not unassailable; from every quarter come 3 warning after warn-1 ing that the naval supremacy upon which our Oceanic Empire rests is already in danger. Discussing the question of British naval supremacy the Auckland "Herald" says:—We do not hesitate to say that, as far as its means go, this Dominion should make any sacrifice to help replace the Imperial Navy in that old position of unchallengeable superiority which was the secret of our peace and security. In this Dominion, as throughout the rest of the colonial Empire, we have been under the delusion that no exertion upon our part was needed to make naval protetion sure and permanent, that no neavy payment upon our part was needed to make Imperial .naval insurance reliable and sufficient. It is time that we awoke from - our lethargy and faced the facts. If we want an adequate Navy we must pay for it; and an adequate Navy means—as Lord Charles Beresford rightly claims—one which will insure against all possibility of attack "the supremacy of the sea and the punctual delivery of the water-borne trade/' For by this the Empire lives.