NAVY LEAGUE NOTES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10073, 20 June 1910, Page 5

NAVY LEAGUE NOTES.

One of the Vice-Presidents, Mr M. Caselberg, has donated £5 tmvsirds: the funds of the Masterton hranru ■ of the Navy League. England is building for a fleet of Dreadnoughts, of the value of £6,000,000, viz.. the Itlinas Geraes (.completed), the Spu i aul», and the Rio d< j Janeiro. Lieutenant K'tnx, tat* of t s :c hoys! Navy, says:— "I have visited every port in Uerm.i»>y frnm Emdt-n to Danzi/, ai d 1 am certain, as I told the peupitt io New Zealand i;mn otia end of the Dominion to tlu ether, that the German fleet is not being built solely for the defence of Germany's coastline and the pr..U.ctkiQ of her sea-borne trade." In January 1908 Prince BuitrV expressed the opinion that "Germany could at most hope to be fo ►mi or fifth of the navies or the world. In jirfarch 1&10 we" see-German;? the second naval Power of Europe! The war o£ 1870 cost Prance .£695,000,000, a sum equal to twenty years' expenditure on the British fleet, and the luss of two provinces. and her debt to-day is 431,200,000,000 ours being £702,000,000, "and that of Germany £210,000,000. Out naval,supremacy is and must * t be dependent upon our commercial supremacy. Germany has ( a soldier fur every single man, woman and t child of the' \ whole population of Scotland. Sir Edward Gibber, Urdtr-Secrp-tary for Education in New ZcaJauu, . says:—"But "for the extensive week'. of the Navy League, carried on in New Zealand for fourteen' years, the offer of a Dreadnought by the Domit.-; ion would riot have been practicable;.' • , [The sportsmanlike character of this, offer,' says an English officer of ' thority, made by one million people, ' is apparent when,we realise that their"National Debt is £7O ,per,'iu?KK of the,population. It) ( the, i ßamerat.'ot. * England's would be £3,G00,000',000. But the offer, much as we admire - " the spirit which prompted it, need, - cause us no surprise, hh »ni? tfial it was made by the same, patriotic - people wbo sent ten military con-, tingents to South Africa in 1599,' and would have- sent twenty had they been required. New Zealand, educated as to the meaning of sea-power, came to the assistance of the Empire, from' a naval poLit of view, the moment Mr Asquith and Mr McKenna and Sir Edward Grey by iheir speeches - of March 16th, 1909, created a na\ al scare. As already announced the Dreadnought offered in March, 1909, is to be named the Zealandia. Here-is the latest topic of conversation in naval circles;— A navy not strong emugh is not worth the cost A navy strong enough is cheap, at t . whatever coot. , * ' The dearest navy we can have is a weak navy. The only cheap'navy we can have r is one which is strong enough. Sydney Smith, in his Peter Plym- - ley letters, says:—-"You cannot im- <■ agine, you say, that England will ever be ruined and conquered; and for no other reason that I,can find, *, » but because it seems so very odd it should be ruined and eonqaered. Alas I so reasoned in their tiras the Austrian, Russian and Prussian Plym- . leys. But the English are brave; so were all these nations. You might get together a hundred thousand men individually brave; but with- " out generals, capable of commanding such a machine, it would be as , useless as a first-class man-of-war manned by Oxford clergymen or Parisian shopkeepers. * ' '

Writing on the effects of invasion, ■ Sydney Smith aaid;—"As for the spirit of peasantry in making a ' gal- ' lant defence behind hedgerows and through plate-racks and hencoops, .highly as I think of thjeir " bravery, I do not know any nation in Europe .' • so likely to be struck with panic. as the English; and this from their total anacquaintance with the science of war. Old wheat and beans blazing for k twenty miles round, cart mares shot, sows of Lord Somervilie'a breed running wild over the country; the min» ister of the parish wounded sorely id his hinder parts; Mrs Plymley in fits. All these scenes of war an Austrian or a Russian has seen three or four times over; but it is. now , three centuries since an English pig has fallen in a fair buttle upon Eng lish ground, or a farmhouse been rifled, or a clergyman's wife been subjected to any other proposals of love than the connubial endearments of her sleek and orthodox mate." '«,Tb<3 Navy..LeagaSfTraini|ig' 3 at Liscard has sent 353 hoys to sea, and has now under training. 122. „, The Navy League Yraining*'£rig atj * WindHOC has sent 155 biys to. sea, ,\\ and ijias at the present .-time 25 under training; and the Reading ani ;„~/S 'CtoonbaW '* * established on Tra.falgar^l)ayiTl y 909, " Mb 60 boys tinder training ;and : 125 on the books, J _ "'' ...... . A ' .'</