GERMANY’S SUBMARINES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 March 1939, Page 3

GERMANY’S SUBMARINES

MODIFICATIONS OF NAVAL AGREEMENTS. “There is one essential condition that must be fulfilled,” writes “Scrutator” in the “Sunday Times,” with reference to the recent modification in the AngloGerman Naval Agreements. “It is that Germany should not seek to challeng our naval supremacy. Her loyal observance of the Naval Treaty of 1935 has been the best guarantee of her sincerity in repudiating ambitions in Western Europe. It is somewhat disconcerting that she should now have put forward a request to be allowed to increase the number of her submarines to parity with ours; and her plea that Russia's submarine fleet is the biggest in the world is not convincing, for submarines are not the counter-craft to submarines. Inevitably the new re- , quest will raise the suspicion that its I motive is to assist Italian ambitions in !

the Mediterranean as Italy had assisted Germany's on land. It should be made clear to Germany that any naval intervention by her that might complicate the problems of the Mediterranean would raise grave doubts about the sincerity of her renunciation of AlsaceLorraine and her protestation of political disinterestedness in the West; for France as well as Britain has frontiers in the Mediterranean. If Germany, directly or indirectly, became a Mediterranean sea Power, it would undermine the basis of many hopes. Perhaps this is destined to be the chief issue in the new year —the last obstacle, one hopes, to enduring peace.”