NEW ZEALAND’S GIFTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2462, 29 March 1909, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND’S GIFTS.

For us to give a Dreadnotight at a cost of about £1,500,000 is for us to pay an additional £60,000 yearly for peace and insurance; for us to give two Dreadnoughts is for us to pay an additional £120,000; it would pay us to give half-a-dozen Dreadnoughts at a cost of £360,000 annually rather than see a German-led combination overpower the British, navy and strike the Empire at its heart. _ If anything will check German ambition, if anything will persuade the greatest military Power in Europe that ‘“'the sea is English and English must remain,” it. is the unsolicited rallying of the British colonies round their Mother Country. For even Germany must realise that an Imperial Government to whose aid flock battleships from distant, seas at the first suggestion of danger is not to be overwhelmed like France or partitioned like Denmark. As for the cost of our timely action, it is not a “gift” so much as a co-operating contribution to a Navy which is ours as much as it is any man’s in the British Isles. As this it must be regarded, as must a second battleship if a second battleship is required.—New Zealand “Herald.”