Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, MAY 19, 1938. DEFENCE OF THE DOMINION.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 May 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, MAY 19, 1938. DEFENCE OF THE DOMINION.

some aspects .of its defence policy, particularly with regard to the recruiting and organisation of the Territorial Force, are being criticised, the present Government must be credited with a genuinely enterprising effort to give this country the means of defending itself in an emergency of the kind that quite conceivably might arise in the existing extreme disorder of world affairs. In an extended survey of the whole position, in an address at Dargaville on Tuesday night, the Minister of Defence (the Hon F. Jones) made it clear that in some vital details, not least where air force is concerned, the Government has advanced boldly and improved very considerably upon measures of defence preparation hitherto undertaken in New Zealand.

Even with thirty' large fighting planes of the most modern type about to be added to the machines of which it is already possessed, the Dominion will not be lavishly equipped in this respect by present-day standards. At least, however, under the plans the Government is developing, we shall soon be possessed of an efficient, though small, air force, which might be able to render all-important service against a raiding enemy.

How far it may be advisable or necessary to go in expanding the various branches of defence preparation no doubt will be determined largely by the trend of world events in the immediate future. The Government in any case is to be commended upon the spirit in which it is facing its responsibilities in the matter of making what provision is reasonably possible to ensure the continuing security of the Dominion and its population.

Nothing the Minister of Defence had to say on Tuesday evening will inspire greater confidence or give more general satisfaction than his statement that the Government is in constant and close communication with the authorities in Great Britain, and his further. observation that close co-operation has been established with the Australian naval authorities for the purposes, of the higher training of the New Zealand personnel.

In its actual measures of defence preparation and in its examination of others that might be undertaken, such as the organisation of coast defence by means of small craft and in other ways, the Government is exhibiting initiative and foresight. The effect of whatever is accomplished in the interests of national security must depend very largely, however, upon the extent to which it is co-ordinated with corresponding ' activities in other parts of the Empire, particularly in the Mother Country and in Australia, with whose fate and fortunes our own so obviously are linked.

Whatever may be thought of this or that detail of the plans and proposals outlined by the Minister of Defence, it may be supposed that the present Government or any other will be supported unreservedly by an overwhelming weight of public opinion in efforts to safeguard the Dominion as far as possible against external attack. This emphatically is a question into which no element of party division should be allowed to intrude.

New Zealanders obviously must be prepared to face a much heavier expenditure of public money on defence preparation than has hitherto been deemed sufficient. Already the figures are expanding. National expenditure on military and civil aviation has increased from £29,158 in 1927-28 to £567,484 in the financial year lately ended and the thirty Vickers Wellington planes now ordered, and equipment, are to cost £750,000.' The Dominion’s naval defence estimates have increased, too, from £462,245 in 1935-36 to £760,000 in 1937-38. Taking account also of the land forces, a somewhat staggering increase in expenditure is in prospect, but the alternative of remaining virtually defenceless will not, in these troubled days, bear contemplation.