It was announced in London on Thursday that Austria- liaugarsr
had determined upon the construction of three additional Dreadnoughts.' But according to a telegram f.rom the Times correspondent at Vienna in Thursday's paper, the Zeit points out that, as it announced four months back, 11°t three, but four, battleships of about twenty thousand tons 4i8Placement will be laid down next autumn, and, provided the uocessary funds are voted, will be completed in 1912. As it !laii been proved that under a system of acceleration two years 18 quite sufficient time in which to complete a Dreadnought,' by no means impossible that these vessels may, in fact, 141.4O(,1111Pleted by the autumn of 1911. We are not going to ,ge!" into a panic, or to ask the British public to get into a yaruo, over these Austro-Hungarian 'Dreadnoughts,' but it Cuuld be idle to pretend that they can be regarded as anything ut a distinct addition to the German programme. For war D11rP°8e5, by sea as well as by land, Austria-Hungary and 178aany must now be regarded as one. But the possession s'Y '11-11atria-Hungary of four 'Dreadnoughts' after 1911 means that If. we are determined not to lose the local command of the sea in the Mediterranean—and considering Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, and Gibraltar it would be exceedingly inconvenient for us to lose that local control even for a month—we shall be obliged to keep such a force of ' Dreadnoughts ' in the Mediter- ranean as will make it certain that Austria-Hungary will not be able to defeat us.
