In the Commons on Monday Mr. Arthur Lee opened the
debate on the Navy Estimates. Our building Programme, he declared, was inadequate and indefensible from the point of view of the enormous financial burden it threw on succeeding years. It provided for one battleship, one large armoured cruiser, six fast protected cruisers, sixteen destroyers, and half-a-million's worth of submarines. But even that Programme was not taken seriously in hand as far as finance was concerned. To all intents and purposes this very small Programme was not the Programme for 1908-9, but for the year 1910. The argu- ment is a very important one from the Exchequer point of view. In the present year, at any rate, the upas-tree of old-age pensions has very little effect, and therefore it is a year which might have been expected to bear a considerable amount of naval expenditure. By economising in naval expenditure in a year which will be the last good Treasury year for a long time, we are throwing that expenditure into a year which will have to bear the burden of between ten and twelve millions for new expenditure on old-age pensions. The German Navy Estimates, continued Mr. Lee, have increased by five hundred per cent. during the last sixteen years, and under the new Navy Bill German expenditure, which was fourteen millions last year, and is seventeen millions this year, will be twenty millions in 1909, twenty-two millions in 1910, and twenty-three millions in 1911. Under the Bill appro- priated by the Reichstag there would be an expenditure in that country of two hundred and eight millions between now and 1917.
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