Mr. Bonar Law proceeded to point out how we had
lost our naval lead because when the present Government came into office they refused to do exactly what Mr. Winston Churchill now tells us it is essential to do—to make " cool, steady, methodical preparation, prolonged over a succession of years." Instead they tried to incite Germany to give up naval com- petition by a self-sacrificing cutting down of our building programme. The only result, of course, was to incite Germany to further efforts in shipbuilding. They did, in fact, the very thing they set out to avoid. We may add that in the course of his speech Mr. Bonar Law stated, " on the authority of the editors of more than one newspaper," that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer held up the six and a half millions of realized surplus a semi-official communication was sent to the Press by the Admiralty pointing out that this was being done on account of the needs of the Navy. " It is obvious," Mr. Bonar Law drily added, "that some change must have taken place since." We cannot find in the debate any serious attempt on the part of the Admiralty to deny this statement.
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