COLONIAL NAVIES.
WE will not yield to any one in our desire to see the Empire strong and united and bound together in what Burke called " an English communion." It is because we so strongly desire that the present ties which bind us and the Colonies together shall not be strained and injured, that we very greatly regret the steps that have been lately taken by a well-meaning but injudicious liody which calls itself the Imperial Federation (Defence) Committee. The aim of these persons—the maintenance of the Empire —is excellent, but their way of carrying out their aim is, in our opinion at least, directly calculated to bring nearer what the Defence Committee desire above all things to avoid,—the destruction of the Empire. They want to bring England and the Colonies closer together, and to do so they use language which will not only tend to make the electors here dissatisfied with the Empire on the ground that the mother-country is injured by the Colonies failing to contribute to the Navy, but will at the same time make the Colonists suspicious that there are schemes afoot for making them pay a tribute to England under the guise of a contribution to the Navy. To make Englishmen discontented with the Colonies as a burden, and angry with the Colonists as men who selfishly and meanly refuse to contribute to their defence but leave other people to do the work, and at the same time to enable the hot-headed Colonists to talk of the revival of the spirit which animated Lord North and George III., is a singular achievement for men who are sincerely anxious to keep the Empire united. Yet unfortunately that, or something very like it, would be the effect of a wide circulation of the proposals of the Defence Committee. So true it is that good intentions are often as injurious as evil acts.
Of course it is only incidentally that the Defence Com- mittee give the impression which we have just set forth. What they actually demand in their letter to Lord Salisbury, is that the Colonies should be asked to contribute to the Navy, and that if, and when, they do so, they should be given a share in its administration. "Ten millions of her Majesty's subjects, of European blood," say the Committee, " inhabiting the self-govern- ing Colonies, contribute practically nothing to the maintenance of the Navy, and have therefore, constitu- tionally, no voice in its disposition or in its administra- tion." The result is that " on the outbreak of war the services of the Navy will inevitably be claimed first by those who have paid for it, and the Colonies, having had no opportunity of co-operation offered to them, and having received no warning to provide for themselves, may suddenly realise that they have no place in the organisation of the British Empire assuring their security in the time of danger. If, on the other hand, the calamity of war be happily avoided, the people of the United Kingdom will before long discover that they are paying for the defence of others as well able as themselves to bear their share of the expenditure. Thus an outcry might not unnaturally be raised against the Colonies, which would provoke mutual ill-feeling and resentment, tending to the destruction of those ties which it is desired on all sides to strengthen and maintain." Now, this way of putting the matter seems to us most objectionable. It is petty in spirit, and suggests that the feeling between the people of the mother-country and the people of the Colonies is of the most sordid kind. We wish that those who drew it up would consult the end of Burke's second speech on conciliation with America. They will find there an infinitely truer view of what should be our position towards the Colonies. But even on hard practical grounds, the notion of getting money contributions for the Navy, and giving the Colonies a right to help control our fleets, is a delusion. To make the Empire safe, the control of the Navy must be centralised in the Parliament and Administration at Westminster. To place it under a Federal Board which could not act till a dozen Governments had been consulted, would be to lose that rapidity and efficiency of action on which in no small measure our safety depends. But though we should deprecate any attempt to get the Colonies to give contributions to the Navy, which if unaccompanied by some form of control would seem like tribute, and which if accompanied by control would impair our naval efficiency, we are by no means disposed to discourage the Colonies from taking thought as to naval defence. We would indeed encourage them most strongly to organise naval forces of their own, which should be able to help defend their coasts and their shipping. In our opinion, no Colony should rest satisfied until it has a naval as well as a military force. We do not desire for a moment that the Imperial Navy should abandon the protection of our Colonies, but we desire to see local supplementary navies owned by the Colonies, and manned and officered by Colonists. Such squadrons would be a help in war-time, and in peace would train the Colonists in the duties of self-defence,--duties which no body of Englishmen should ever depute. It is for this reason among others that we should not care to see the Colonies, as it were, hiring British ships at so much per ton per annum to guard their shores. That is the system now followed in Australia ; but it is not a good one. We should far rather see the Colonies, acting of course under the advice of the Admiralty, build their own ships, and provide them with men and officers. They would, no doubt, begin by transplanting officers from home, so as to gain the advantages of the traditions of the English Navy ; but ultimately the bulk of the officers and men should be men who, when their time was up, intended to live in the Colony owning the ships. In this way, the Colonies would become really interested in and proud of their ships, and a naval spirit would grow up. If Australia and South Africa were united like Canada, three powerful navies representing the three federations might be established, capable not only of defending their own waters, but able to lend efficient help in securing the command of the sea to the Anglo-Saxon. There is no reason why the Canadian Dominion, the Australian Commonwealth, and the South African Union, should not each have a navy as strong as that of Holland,— should not each, that is, have, besides coast-defence vessels, a couple of first-class battleships, four powerful cruisers, and half-a-dozen gunboats. But out of these forces could be constituted a squadron as powerful as that of a first-class Power,—one which, if sent to the Mediter- ranean or the North Atlantic at the crisis of a war, might turn the scale in the favour of the English race, and so affect the fate of the world. Curiously enough, this very proposal for locally owned Colonial squadrons is being at this very moment worked out at the Cape. The Cape Times of August 21st contains a very interesting series of articles and interviews dealing with the proposal to build and equip a cruiser—H.M.S. Africander '—as " a contribu- tion to our common defence." The proposal is not to have the cruiser kept moored in Table Bay, but for a ship capable of taking her share in the command of the sea. Of course one cruiser does not make a squadron, but as representing the idea of local Colonial navies, the pro- posals in regard to the Africander ' are excellent.
We are quite aware that we shall be told that our plan of local navies is a bad one, because it does not ensure unity of action, and it will be urged that therefore the plan of the Colonies hiring so much annual protection from the British Admiralty, is preferable. In theory, no doubt, this is true ; but in practice we cannot help feeling that it would be demoralising. We do not want to see the Colonists buying protection by the ton. We want them to take more than a mercenary share in their work of protecting the Empire. For this reason we should like to see the local fleets under the control of the local Parliaments. It should, however, be arranged that the several Colonial naval services and the British service should be governed by a common discipline, that all should be Queen's ships, and that officers should be capable of being promoted from one service to the other. When in the case of war the Colonies despatched aid to the mother-country, they would of course place their contrilutpry squadrons under the orders of the Admiralty, either for a fixed term or till the end of the war. No doubt some friction might arise, but it would be less than the friction which arises between ordinary allies in the case of naval action. Against this must be placed the fact that under a system of local navies we should get a real and definite increase of the Navy, while under the tribute system we should be apt merely to relieve the home taxpayer. Our Fleet under the Admiralty will not really be increased if we get £1,000,000 a year in Colonial subsidies ; we shall, in the long-run, only decrease the estimates by that amount. If, however, the Colonies themselves spend £1,000,000 a year on local squadrons, we shall maintain our Fleet at the level at which it would have been maintained even if there had been Colonial contributions. Depend upon it, the plan of local fleets, though possibly more wasteful, will secure us as an Empire a greater number of ships and men, and so increase the chance of our maintaining as a race the command of the sea.
We cannot go into the question more in detail just now, but we may allude to some of the incidental advantages. The local navies will produce a body of men- of-war's men along the Canadian, Australian, and South African coasts, and so increase that part of our mari- time population which is inured to war. At present the number of men fit for naval work to be found in any Colony must be very small. If, however, we had local Colonial navies, and if a good sprinkling of the men of Newfoundland and of the Gulf of St. Lawrence had served on board Queen's ships of various kinds, an ironclad which had lost 20 per cent. of her men in action might be able to recruit her strength without coming home. We want not only to defend the Colonies and their trade, but to see a portion of their population inoculated with the naval spirit, and the mass of the people made to realise personally that unless their race can keep command of the sea, then are they of all men most miserable. This we shall not get by money contributions to White- hall. We can get it, however, if our great Colonies are encouraged to establish local navies.
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