That is rather a mysterious telegram summarizing Mr. Walter Long's statement on the report that the American Navy will equal the British in another three years Such statements usually take pains, to prove reports of this kind wrong. The First Lord apparently did his best to show that facts were even worse than rumour—with the United States estimates actually £44,000,000 more than the British, comparisons of naval personnel already to our disadvantage and likely to grow more so. The only possible conclusion is that Mr. Long was deliberately trying to frighten the nation with prospects of Great Britain's losing that naval supremacy which is indispensable to the safety of the Empire. Thet is a point on which public opinion, labour and pacifists notwithstanding, is easily and rightly aroused. On the other hand what terrible irony of circumstanco if, the war having been fought which was to end wars and which did to some extent spring from competition in armaments, we are now to be involved in a fresh naval competition, assuredly not of our choosing yet which we cannot well decline-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.