Lord George Hamilton delivered a speech to the Midland Union
of Conservative Associations at Birmingham on Wed- nesday on the Naval Defence question, in which he said that while in France, for every two francs locked:: up in stores on shore, there was only one franc invested in ships afloat, we have two francs represented in sea-going ships for every one franc locked up in land establishments. And this is the calculation of a French naval critic, not of an English naval critic. Lord George Hamilton also pointed out that in our Royal Dockyard establishments we are able to do more with 12,000 men than the French Marine with 22,000. To that he would add that we could build ships 50 per cent, more quickly than any foreign nation. Speaking of Sir William Harcourt's attack on the plan elaborated for naval defence for a given period of years, he said that nothing:showed more clearly the necessity for some such plan which commits the country to a given expenditure year by year, than Sir William Harcourt's last tenure of office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Government had ordered a large number of quick-firing guns, but then they had deliberately struck out the order for the ammunition which rendered these guns
efficient. A more telling answer to Sir William Harcourt's attack could hardly be imagined.
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