Mr, Winston Churchill, who made his statement on the Navy
Estimates on Monday, discussed the naval situation
vis-d-vis with Germany, prefacing his remarks with the observation that nothing was to be gained by using indirect modes of expression. "The Germans are a people of robust mind, whose strong and masculine sense and high courage do not recoil from and are not offended by plain and blunt statements of fact if expressed with courtesy and sincerity." He then proceeded to lay down the conditions under which naval competition would be carried on for the next few years, premising that at the moment we held a great advantage in the event of a naval war in the numbers and superiority of our pre-Dreadnought ships ; that the cost of maintenance apart from new construction must grow irresistibly with every year ; and that it was wrong and waste- ful to build a single ship before it was wanted, since nearly three years of its life have been lived before it is born. In view of these facts and the rise of the German Navy to the first place on the Continent, they were obliged to readjust their standard, and to substitute for the Two-Power standard a 60 per cent. superiority in vessels of the Dreadnought type over the German Navy on the basis of an existing Fleet Law.
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