Changing Navies
The First Lord of the Admiralty, by producing on Monday the spectacular figures of the strength of the. Russian Navy, succeeded in directing attention to a subject of first class importance. The idea that the most likely war-time adversary of the Royal Navy would be the Russian Navy is still so unfamiliar to the public at large that the shock produced by these figures—twenty powerful cruisers, over a hundred• destroyers and over 350 submarines—will probably be salutary. A force of this formidable size and modern balance, largely concentrated in the Baltic and northern waters, is sufficient in itself to account for the changing composition of the Royal Navy. The spectacle at Spithead, at the naval review later this year, of bulky aircraft carriers side by side with large numbers of frigates, minesweepers and other small vessels, with battleships, cruisers and destroyers less in evidence than ever before, will be a new one in the history of naval reviews, but the experience of the war had already prepared the way for the balance of forces which the Russian naval building pro- gramme has made inevitable. There are, of course, reasons why the Royal Navy may feel confidence about its ability to perform its old and still vital task of keeping the sea-lanes open. The Russians lack battle experience and a naval tradition, and swift as their technical progress may have been, with the aid of German experts, the Western Navies had a long lead which they are unlikely to lose quickly. But over-confidence at this stage would be quite out of the question—so much so that there must be misgivings about the Naval Estimates presented this week. which are actually £5,750,000 less than last year; about the obvious deficiencies of the Fleet Air Arm; and about the recur- rence of the danger that the Navy will be starved of money in peace on the old excuse that it always manages to come up to the scratch in war.
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