29 JANUARY 1910, Page 3

Sir Edward Grey at Hexham on Tuesday declared that whereas

in March the Government said they might have to give orders for putting in hand the ships necessary to be built in the course of the year in order to maintain our naval position, they were now in a position to say that they had done it. "From what he knew of the facts, what they had done would ensure that by March, 1912, they would have not fewer ships of the finest class, but as many ships of the finest class as the Cawdor programme would have given; and if there was ay difference between what they had done and the Cawdor programme, it was simply that the sixteen new ships which they would have in 1912 would be of finer and stronger type than they would have been if they had all been ordered earlier."