Mr. Winston Churchill has addressed a long letter to the
chairman of the Liberal Party in Dundee "to combat the naval alarms." He condemns the "stupid and vicious error" of attempting to measure the strength of the British Navy, or any Navy, in 'Dreadnoughts' only, and lays stress on our pre- ponderance in men and the number of guns. The British Navy, he continues, is at this moment more nearly thrice than twice as strong as the Navy of Germany, and even in 1912 the margin of safety will be "tremendous." After contemptuous refer- ences to the sheer cowardice of the " Dreadnought ' Pear. All" school, Mr. Churchill dismisses as childish the notion that modern fleets can be built without anybody knowing any- thing about them, and observes that "it has not been proved, and is not, in my judgment, true, that Germany can build a single battleship, and, still less, that she can build a shnul- taneous squadron of battleships, as quickly as we can." The two-Power standard, he continues, is not a standard of numbers, it is a standard of strength. "At the present moment it has no meaning, and for this reason,—that no reasonably probable combination against this country of any two existing naval Powers can be discerned." Finally, Mr. Churchill denounces as "the most monstrous error" and the "most fatal obsession that could benumb the brain of a statesman" the notion that there is any serious antagonism of interests between the British and German nations.
Previous page
