On Thursday the First Lord of the Admiralty was one
of the principal guests at the two hundred and eighty-third anniversary feast of the Cutlers at Sheffield. Though Lord Tweedmonth in his speech dwelt upon a good deal of the criticism that has of late been levelled at the Admiralty, we regret to say that he did not take the opportunity of denying the rumour that it is the intention of the Government to reduce very greatly the numbers of our battleships and cruisers in commission. We have dealt with the whole subject elsewhere, and would only repeat here that we must refuse to believe the rumour until it is confirmed by some official act or declaration. At the same time, we cannot deny that Lord Tweedmouth's avoidance of the subject will cause a good deal of anxiety in the public mind. After congratulating the country upon the successful trials of the 'Dreadnought,' "the greatest battleship that has ever been built," and mentioning that during the course of the dinner he had received a telegram saying that her gunnery trials had passed off with the greatest satisfaction, Lord Tweedmouth declared that " the future was with the great battleships, with the heavy armour, and with the huge guns." In dealing with the reduction that had been made in the building pro- gramme of the Navy during the present year, Lord Tweed- mouth spoke sensibly and moderately. One of the first duties of every great spending Department was, he declared, to exercise economy, but he laid it down as an axiom that economy must not clash with fighting efficiency. That axiom was thoroughly accepted by the present Board of Admiralty. Foreign Powers adopted long-drawn-out programmes, but those programmes had in the past not been realised. The Board of Admiralty believed that the best course was year by year to form the programme of the year for the necessities of the year, estimated according to the exact amount of work which had been carried out by our foreign rivals.
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