NAVY LEAGUE NOTES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10063, 10 August 1910, Page 7

NAVY LEAGUE NOTES.

Extracts from a letter rrceived by Mr W. Palmer fiorn Lseut, Knox, K.N , crgsiming lecturer of Che Navy League at headquarters :~ "This week the Herts branch of the Laague is taking a leaf out of tha book of the League i:\ New Zealand and of the Navy League in Germany by taking over 2000 people down to Portsmouth to visit the dockyard. The Commander in Chief, Admiral CurzMj Howe, has been kind enough to give them very possible facility." "I lectured at Sea View, Isle of Wight, on 'The First Country to oilier a Dreadnought to the Empire," showing my own slides taken during my delightful, and ail to short visit to toe Dominion in 1908-1909. The beauty of the scenery in 'God's Own Country' was a revelation to my audience and to all others to whom I have lectured in these Islands. The High Commissioner has very kindly given me a liberal supply of the excellent booklet 'New Zealand in a Nutshell,' to be distributed whenever I lecture on New Zealand, which I intend to do as often as possib'e. Rest assured that as Jorg as I live I shall always be grateful to New Zealand and all my kind friends on it j.for all they did for ms in 1808." } "Our chief naval requirements at the present time may be put as fellows: —1. Docks for Dreadnoughts—particularly on the East Cogst. 2. Destroyer programme hurried up (there is no excuse for the fact that < we have not yet ready one single de- j stroyer of the 1908 programme, which was agreed to in March, 1908, , whereas Germany has commissioned I all her destroyers of that year). 3. ' That some at least of the live Dreadnoughts voted for the 1910 programme shall be laid down this year iostead of, as at present decided, 1911. Only £340,000 is voted this year for those five ships, which, when completed will coit £11,000,000! What we want to know is what is the Government going to do with Kitchener? Malta is hardly large enough to contain him. Punch when he landed had an excellent cartoonBritannia receiving him and saying 'I welcome you, but I wonder what your next post will be. Our politicians are not very fond of strong men.' " Lord Charles B'eresford says:— "This Empire is mainly created, and is only maintained, by the power of the British Fleet, and the Navy League would have fully justified its existence had it never done any other work than to briufc- this fact home to the youth of our public schools." Votes for Guns anj ammunition. — 1905-6, £3,083,507; 1909-10, £2,521,000. Two Gsrman submarir.es U3 and U4 recently steamed from Cuxhaven to Kiel via the Skager Rock, 540 miles, unattended, in forty hours. —H. C. 8., "German Naval Notes." Pola, the Austrian Portsmouth, on the Adriatic, has the largest wireless station on the continent. The tower is 300 feet high, built on a foundation of glass. The whole occupies eL»ht awes. Engineer, January 28th, 1910. German Dockyards.—23.9oo men in dockyards 1910; 19,869 in 1902; Kiel, 8500; Wilhelmshayen, 8134; Danzig, 3593; Friednchoort Torpedo Works, 1555; Artillery ammunition depots, 2126. These figures do not include private yards. April 1912.—1n April, 1912, Britain will have fourteen Dreadnoughts and six Invincibles. Germany at the same date thirteen Dreadnoughts and four Invincibles, viz: "Von der Tann," G. H. and J. In Germany it is considered an honour to belong to the German Navy League which, founded three years after our own, has now 1,200,000 members and at least £50,000 a year. In this country our League is supported by a handful of enthusiasts, and is cavilled at by other people for everything it does and everything it do:s not do. We want 1,000,000 members here, and the same wjiolehearted support which is given to the Navy League in New Zealand from one end of the Dominion to the other. Work of the German Navy League.—Bavarian sailors joining the Gentian Navy: 1895, 65; 1905, 502; 1908, 790. The German Navy League educates the rising generation by taking children frutn all over Germany to Kiel, Wilhelmshaven, Bremerhaven, Hamburg, stc , in order that ihey may see and be proud of the German men-of-war and merchant ships.