In the House of Commons during the past week there
has been little of importance doing except the Navy Estimates. Mr. Balfour has, we regret to say, been laid up with influenza, and this has prevented Procedure being dis- cussed. Mr. Arnold-Forster made the usual explanatory statement in connection with the Navy Estimates on Friday week. The increase in the personnel would be 3,875, bringing up the total at the end of the year on the active - service ratings to 122,500. Service in the Reserve, which now stood at 7,100, was to be made com- pulsory, and a Bill was to be introduced legalising the engaging of Reservists not only in Newfoundland, but in every other colony or dependency of the Empire. The Government also hoped, as the result of the Committee recently appointed to inquire into the mann ing a the Navy, to revive the Naval Volunteers. Mr. Arnold-Forster also ex- plained the measures taken to improve the food of the sailors and quicken promotion amongst the engineers, and gave a most
satisfactory report of the progress of ships under construction. He also stated that a new type of more seaworthy destroyer had been designed, and announced that the Admiralty had decided to make use of the "comparatively less excellent boats" for peace exercises, keeping the new boats in reserve to save them from the accidents inseparable from such exercises. In the ensuing debate Mr. Lough denounced the naval expenditure as excessive, while Sir Charles Dilke attacked the shipbuilding programme as grotesquely inadequate, and notable speeches in support of the maintenance of the present level of expendi- ture as a minimum were made by Mr. Asquith and Mr. Haldane, the latter pointing out that an outlay of £30,000,000 represented an insurance premium of only 2 per cent. on our national income.
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