Mr. Balfour, in that part of his speech which dealt
with the state of the Navy, insisted on the special point raised by Mr. Arthur Lee—namely, that the spring of 1914 would be the critical period. According to Mr. Lee we shall then have twenty-nine ships of the ' Dreadnought ' type in Atu.epean waters, while the Triple Affiance will also have twenty-nine-a a condition of things which will leave no margin for accidents. Mr. Balfour insisted that we must keep in mind that, in addition to our responsibility in other parts of the world, we have to maintain our supremacy in home waters and in the Mediterranean. We could not, he declared, ignore the fact that at this moment three Mediterranean Powers (he excluded Turkey) were building capital ships like those which we were constructing. To this Mr. McKenna interposed the remark that Mr. Lee's forecast of the situation in 1914 was not accepted by the Admiralty.
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