NAVY LEAGUE NOTES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10057, 3 August 1910, Page 3

NAVY LEAGUE NOTES.

One of the moat recent advances in 1 boat construction is the addition of hydroplanes, which by lifting boats higher than their orci. *ry flotation j line reduces friction, enables greattr j speed to be obtained, and permits the j passage of boats through shallow j waters, as in river navigation. One > form of the invention is a high-sped shallow-draft tunnel for hydroplanes adaptable to motor and other boats. In this development Mr RamsaySmith of Chelsea was the pioneer, j The advantage claimed for the sys- j tem is the greatly reduced draft, direct thrust, protection of the pro- ; |-idlv!i', and the possibility of ground- ] li.K vessel anywhere and with irn- ; punity at any time. !

i<'or the five battleships of the British new construction, 1910. programme, not one of which is to be commenced till next year, which will cost when completed at least £10,000,000, a sum of £321,114 has been voted this year, made up a follows—No. 1, £96,714; No. 2, £96,723; No. 3, £38,447; No. 4, £48,604; No. 5, £40,626. The four secondclass British protected Cruisers of the 1909-1910 programme will be called Dartmouth, Falmouth, Weymouth and Yarmouth; they are being built by Vickers, Beardmore, Armstrong, Whitworth a"d Co., and the London and Glasgow Shipbuilding Company respectively.

The jealousy of nations is only the jealousy of individuals intensified, and as long as one nation desires to possess that which another has got, so long will wars be possible. We cannot be surprised, having fought Spain, Holland, France, etc., witri success that Germany, which desires to expand, and can onjy do so at our expense, should first desire to get the British Empire out of the way. For us a strong fleet means peace and the retention of our Empire, a weak fleet means suoner ur later war and the loss of the Empire. "Only numbers can annihilate, and it is annihilation that the country wants".—-Nelson. What the country wanted at the beginning of the nineteenth century it will want again in the twentieth century, should we he attacked.

The late Lord Salisbury on the future of the British Empire—"There have been great Colonial and Maritime powers four or five, but they have always fallen. If we ever allow our defences at sea to fall to such a point of inefficiency that it is easy, or nearly as easy, to cros3 the sea as it 13 to cross a land frontier, our great Empire, stretching to the ends of ohe earth, supported fay maritime force in every part of it, will come clattering to the ground when a blow , at the metropolis of England is struck."

The British Mercantle Marine contains 38,000 foreign seamen, to whom we pay £2,000,000 annually in order that they may take the bread out of the mouth 3 of British men.

I am convinced that tha secrecy of the Press in war time is one of the most important thing-' to be arranged for in peace time! Nelson and Wellington both complained of the publicity of the Press, and trouble was experienced in FrarcoGerraan War 1870, Egyptian Campaign 1882, Spanish-American War 1898, Boer war 1899-1902. On June 23rd, in the House of Lords, the Lord Chancellor and Lord Granard spoke in favour of a Bill dealing with the Press in War time.

"The old idea, . . that armies and navies are but transitory expedients, brought into existence only in the time of war and put aside when it ends, will sooner or later plunge the nation into the abyss out of which few have come forth. Now, and in the future more so, must all preparations for war be made in time of peace, even to the extent of wurking out by hypothetical campaigns in

probable theatres 61 war. Whatever nation neglects tbt.se precautions is dromed to defeaf. "The potential tvjval strength of a nation is determine' 1 , not by the products of a single year, but by the term of years that marks its duration; not by alternating cycles of renascence and deterioration, but by a continuous policy of production and excel' lence as determined from year to year by the increasing political importance of the nation progress in naval invention. To accomplish this the navy must be removed far from the politics —that state of tiansitoryjdeals, that ideal of transitory greatness. But this nation has not put aside the the characteristics, so prominent in a republican forms of government, cf treating the Army and Navy as the expedients"oJTa struggle, rathrr than the permanent source of a nation's safety. If this policy were passible in the past, it is no longer so, and each succeeding year din inishcs its probabilities."—The Valor of Ignorance.

Now that the women of England have taken up whole-heartedly the work of the Navy League, they will be amused toknow that the following question was asked in the House of Commons on March 19th, 7906, by Mr Alfred King, M.P., by whom the Knutsford Division of Cheshire then had the honour of being represented—"Whether the Secretary of the Admiralty was aware that a lecture had recently been given to a school for girls in St. Andrews by Lieutenant Knox of the Navy League, and that after the lecture a number of school girls had been enrolled members of the Navy League, and whether this proceeding had the sanction of the Admiralty 7" It may pnssibly iuterest this gentleman to know that the Navy League cumbers amongst its supporters many schoolboys and schoolgirls, not only in these Islands, but in ail the outlying parts of the Empire.

German Navy League.—Membership, 1,031,339; joined in 1909, 24,000; circulation of Die Fliotte per month, 345,000; a c'rculation larger than any daily newspaper in Germany.