On Thursday in the House of Commons the vote for
the personnel of the Navy was discussed. The Opposition criticised the reduction of strength by a thousand men, while from some Radicals there was a demand for much larger reductions in order to produce a good impression on ' the Hague Conference. Mr. Balfour pointed out that Lord Salisbury's Government relied for the preservation of peace on those Treaties of Arbitration which had since been so useful. Some of them were public, some secret, and on them he still based his hopes. A reduction of armaments would be an inestimable boon to mankind, but it must postulate the maintenance of the same relative strength among the nations. Mr. E. Robertson, who spoke for the Govern- ment, admitted that ships with nucleus crews were not so efficient as ship fully manned, but the Admiralty were satis- fied with them. They were certainly a great improvement on the old plan of having ships in reserve without crews. We may say that if this represented the strict alternative we should agree. But Mr. Robertson does not mention the case of the nucleus-crew ships, which are a substitute, not for unmanned ships, but for fully manned ships.
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