March 14.
By her decision to construct a navy of her own Canada has taken an important step in her develop ment as an integral portion of the British Empire and must now defiotively be held to have passed from a Colony toa State. A subject of serious consideration for twenty yours, naval defence has been for many months past uppermost among the topics of discussion in the Canadian political world, and the problem has only now been finally threshed out after a debate of several weeks in the House of Commons. In the altered form in which the Government Naval Bill has passed its second reading the Dominion stands pledged to a local navy comprising four cruisers of the Bristol type, of 4,800 tons' displacement and a capacity to steam twenty-five knots, H. M. S. Niobe of 11,000 tons and a speed of twenty knots, six torpedo-boat destroyers of the improved River class, and H. M.S. Rainbow, a protected cruiser of 3,600 tons and a speed of twenty knots. The Niobe and the Rainbow are to be purchased as soon as possible from the British Government and will be used at first as training ships, the former on the Atlantic station, the latter on the Pacific. On the completion of the fleet two of the Bristol cruisers are to be stationed on the Pacific with thr Rainbow, and two on the Atlantic with the Niobe, which will then take her place as an active unit, and the destroyers. The capital cost of the ships named, together with the establishment of a naval college, will amount to nearly eleven million dollars, if the vessels be purchased in England, but this sam will be increased by some wanty-five per cent if the scheme of building them in Canada is adopted. For the creation of a naval force, consisting of a permanent corps, a reserve force and a volunteer force, and current expenses incidental to the establishment of a Naval Service, annual appropriations will be required of from one-and-a-quarter tuillion dollars for the first year to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.