August 25.
Wrrarm the space of one week two remarkably confident announcements have been made by the London Press of certain startling schemes of naval construction which the Government is said to have under consideration. Last week we were told of proposals, favoured, it was said, by the most influential members of the Cabinet, to raise 2 £100,000,000 loan as a fund to be drawn upon fcr naval requirements, in order that the annual The H.C. herald and 5. C. & C. Gazewe. budget might not be disturbed. To-day we receive the outline of a four-years' programme which is to provide thirty Dreadnoughts or Indomitables, ata round cost of fifty millions over and above the present estimates. Neither report, if taken singly, would be likely to command very serious attention, although they may be thought to gain weight from the very fact of their finding publicity in papers unfriendly to the present Administration; while, in the case of today's telegram, it may be remembered that the ' Observer" has given proof more than once of special knowledge of Mi rial intentions. But considered together, especially when joined with recent allegations of an attempted naval entente with Germany, they are not unreasonably to be regarded ina different light. It seems to be beyond dispute that overtures were made officially or unofficially, with a view to effecting some mitigation of the intolerable rivalry into which Germany's naval ambitions would force us. So much may be deduced from the declarations of the German Press that it was impossible for Germany to entertain any proposal on these lines, since her naval programme was already fixed by law down to the end of the year 1914. No Anglo-German agreement that failed to include relief from the burden of naval construction would have much value so far as Great Britain i: concerned: and we are left with the alternative supposition that the British Government has reluctantly decided to convince Germany that her undertaking is a hopeless one and that no possible efforts of hers can bring her within measurable distance of that supreme acy at sea which Great Britain now possesses and is determined to retain. That is to say that for every keel laid down in German dockyards two will be laid down in British; the alleged scheme outlined by the "Observer" works out by one ship less than that in Great Britain's favour, but the
objection. It is the duel of which difference is not likely to provoke country has the longest purse, first suggested in irony, if we remember rightly, by Mr. Labouchere, but quickly adopted in all seriousness by other writers as the one feasible method of checking extra-vacant competition.
The answer of those who resist the idea of a two to one standard of construction rests principally on a comparison of the actual numbers of the British and German fleets: and from this point of view alone their demand for more bulunced
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.