TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NAVY ESTIMATES. NOT long after these pages are in our readers' bands the country will know the shipbuilding programme for the coming year in detail. It is the hope of every sensible man that it will be adequate, and will secure for the future that absolute command of the sea against all comers which was the principle of action laid down by the Prime Minister. But though we must hope that the Government intend to do the right thing, and to do it in the right way, we are bound to say that the rumours as to what is described as " the com- promise on the Navy Estimates " inspire us with consider- able misgiving. According to what seem to be official hints, the Times of Tuesday states that the arrange. ment come to is of the following nature. The Admiralty, we are told, considers that our supremacy at sea cannot be secured unless at least six capital ships are laid down in the present year. But the opponents of a big Navy aro determined not to accept such a proposal, or at any rate are determined not to appear to accept it. Accordingly a compromise has been arrived at under which only four capital ships will be definitely asked for, but an arrange- ment will be made under which the Government, should they deem it necessary, will be able to extend and develop their programme to the extent of two additional vessels. In other words, the Admiralty is to get its six ships, but there are to be two bites at the cherry, and it is to appear during the first portion of the year that Parliament is only committed to four.
Though we have little doubt that the compromise will end as the Admiralty and the majority of the Cabinet intend it shall end—namely, in the laying down of six capital ships this year—we cannot profess to regard the result as satisfactory. In our opinion, the Government by accepting it are doing the right thing in the wrong way. And doing it in the wrong way is in the present case a very great blunder. Our reasons for saying this have been often set forth in the Spectator, but may be stated once more. In view of the competition for the command of the sea, which is just now for us the essen- tial fact of international politics, it is necessary not only to come to the private determination to maintain our sea power, but to make it clear to the whole world that we are not slackening in the race and shall certainly win it. If we convince the world of that fact, there is a reasonable possibility of our chief competitor coining to the conclusion that it is not worth while to continue the contest. Bidding at an auction at which, remember, every bid has to be tabled in 'gold is no light matter. Here in a nutshell is the argument against a policy of naval driblets, rather than of making our rivals realise that we are not wearying of the competition, but are perfectly determined, and perfectly able, to maintain our supremacy at sea. If our object were to lure Germany on to more and more expenditure on her Navy, and therefore to the disloca- tion of her finances, the driblet policy would no doubt be the one to pursue. We do not, however, want to lure Germany on. We want, instead, to prove bow mistaken is the policy of those who say to her :—" One more effort and you will win. See, the other man is already breathless and almost spent. If you will only bend all your strength to the task you will very soon be level with him."
If the six capital ships deemed necessary by the Admiralty, and sanctioned by the majority of the Cabinet, were to be voted as a matter of course, and without protest or whining of any kind, we will not say that the effect would be to produce an immediate alteration in German policy, but unquestionably its tendency would be in the direction desired by the friends both of peace and of economy. On the other hand, the fact that the laying down of four capital ships is only obtained with difficulty, and that the two extra ships, though they are, in effect, admitted by the Government to be necessary, may perhaps not be built, cannot but encourage that portion of the German people who seriously believe that their national moral is of so much higher a quality than ours that if they are only persistent enough they will eud by outbidding us, and will obtain, in Bacon's phrase, that "abridgment (or quintessence] of. Monarchy" which goes with the copimand of the sea. In a word, whatever is determined on by those who are responsible for the decision as to what is necessary to secure us the command of the sea should be done by Parliament in the frankest, quickest, and least grudging way possible, —in a way to make it absolutely clear to the rest of the world that the retention of the command of the sea is not for us a matter of pride, or of national amour propre, or, again, a luxury which conceivably may become too expensive to be supported, but is a matter of life and death about which there can be no sort of doubt or discussion.
It is one of the ironies of the problem of the command of the sea that those who appear to care least about it, and who make it almost a matter of conscience to oppose the measures necessary to secure it, are iu reality the very people who rely upon it moat and are most ready to invoke it. Among the Radical opponents of the big Navy are to be found the majority of those who, to their great credit, have insisted upon keeping such questions as the mis- government of the Congo and the recrudescence of slavery in Portuguese West Africa to the front. They declare_ that we have no right in cases like these to say that the subject does not concern us, and that, though we may be very sorry from a humanitarian point of view, our duty is to mind our own business and not to interfere with other people. They insist in the loudest terms on Britain's right to interfere, and point with pride to what we have done in the past in the matter of the slave trade. Yet a study of history will show that Britain's capacity to put down slavery, and to interfere with the misgovern- ment of native races, rests without question upon sea, power. If the possibility of invoking that sea power had not always existed in the background, we should have found that foreign nations would not have tolerated for an instant what they have always regarded as our hypo. critical and offensive pretensions to set our neighbours right. The reason why we were able to do so much during the close of the great war and the generation that succeeded it in abolishing slavery is to be found in the fact that our command of the sea was absolute and unchallenged. Modern Radicals sometimes ask with a sense of bewilderment how was it that the aristocratic Governments in the " twenties " and "thirties" were able to accomplish so much in putting down slavery when Radical Governments are now almost impotent to make Portugal act up to her Treaty responsibilities in regard to slavery.' The answer is,—sea power. If they will only look below the surface, those who desire that Britain shall continue to play in the future the beneficent part she has played in the past will find that the command of the sea is inseparable from a humanitarian policy in Africa and elsewhere. Advocates of a policy of which the Congo movement is typical must either support an invincible Navy (nothing less than an invincible Navy will do), or else abandon a course of action which, as we have said before, as a rule appears to the rest of the world a gross interference in other people's business. If we mean to challenge the right of other cations, in the old Southern slave-owner's phrase, to " wallop their own nigger," we must remember that without the command of the sea such a challenge cannot possibly be made good.
Before we leave the subject of sea power we desire to deal shortly with a Radical criticism of the Spectator's attitude on this point. How inconsistent is the Spectator ! say our critics. In one article it denounces the Liberal Government for their extravagance and their profligate finance, and on the very next page demands in the strongest possible language higher expenditure on the Navy. A very little consideration will show the absurdity of this accusation. It is just because we are so strongly convinced of the necessity of large extra expenditure upon the Navy that we protest against huge expenditure in other directions. As a matter of fact, we believe that expenditure on so-called social reform is injurious and demoralising in itself, and defeats its own object. Even, however, if we thought that old-age pensions and other forms of State Socialism were not injurious, we should be opposed to them at the present time on the ground that the first duty of a State is to make itself secure from foreign attack. It would be of little use to provide for old-age pensions for four or five years, and then at the end of that period to be so crippled by an unsuccessful foreign war that there would be no nioney left to pay those pensions. National' insurance must come before any and every ether charge. Instead of the Spectator .being inconsistent in opposing a bloated Budget, and at the same time desiring that the maintenance of our supremacy at sea shall never for one moment be in jeopardy, such a double policy is a proof of consistency The advocacy of lavish expenditure both on social reform and on a big Navy is only.possible for those who think that the State possesses a-Fortunatus's purse. Those who, like ourselves, do not believe in that pleasant theory, but hold that the amount of money expendable by the nation is a :very definite and restricted sum, are bound to take up a . wholly different attitude. To them the need for a strong Navy makes moderation of expenditure in other directions an absolute necessity, and the advocacy of national extravagance nothing less than treason to the State.
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