Lord Charles Beresford at the annual Australasian banquet on Friday
week made an interesting speech on the subject of Imperial defence. In his opinion, our great Dominions could beat help us, not by spending two millions on battleships to serve in British waters, but by making proposals for defending themselves. If they invested that sum in home defence and cruisers which could go out and protect their trade routes, he thought it would be a better investment than in helping to defend the shores of this country. If they began with cruisers, they could eventually perhaps go on to larger craft. In the scheme which he outlined it was essential that those vessels should be under the administration and control of the Dominions themselves, and that they should be interchangeable with the vessels in the British Fleet. He would also have the officers and men interchangeable for the purposes of training, and the various fleets should have identical designs and an identical system of discipline. Coming to the ' Dreadnought ' question, Lord Charles Beresford declared that he did not object to ' Dread- noughts' or improvements in battleships. What he did object to was the insane advertisement " of the first 'Dread- nought,' which had led to the craze for armaments on the part of foreign Powers, and cost us £50,000,000 more than we need have spent. He wished to make it clear that be con- sidered it absolutely necessary that we should lay down eight 'Dreadnoughts' this year. But that would only be a beginning of the fleet which we should have to form owing to our deferred obligations in the last four years.
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