December 1.
Taxne is particular significance in the lucid statement of Mr. A. J. Balfour, leader of the Opposition, of the existing conditions of British national defences, with his emphatic call to the nation to awake to the truth of the naval situation, following as it does so closely the appeals by Lord Charles Beresford to the Government to adopt s programme that will restore the Navy to an unassailable footing and keep it! above challenge. From the tone of Mr. Balfour's speech at Glasgow, it ident that the Liberal Government's attitude has caused the gravest anxiety. He charged the Government with whittling a the two-Power standard by making qualifications that were hitherto unknown, and said that the superiority of four Dreadnoughts in 1913, as foreshadowed by the Prime Minister, was wholly inadequate. For years it has been the policy of the British Government to seek to maintain what has been called the two-Power standard, which was that the British Navy should be equal to the navies of the two next strongest Powers, with a ten per cent margin over and above these. In 1905 the fleet was maintained at this standard, but Mr. we talk of it with explanations and qualifications, safeguarding in this direction, and diminishing in that direction, until what was, after all, only formula, intended, as it were, to make clear to the ordinary man in the street the sort of thing we were aiming st, has lost its whole
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.