PAYING FOR THE DREADNOUGHT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2064, 31 March 1909, Page 6

PAYING FOR THE DREADNOUGHT.

I Most of our contemporaries, in disssing the Government’s offer to the itish Navy, liave made only brief alnon .’to the question of ways and >ans, and then merely to point outat only an extra £60,000 or £70,000 year is necessary to meet the annual terest payment on a loan of two milns. One of the Christchurch papers, wever, has regarded the matter as e requiring something quite different from a long-term loan which a future generation shall deal with as- best - it im when the time comes for meeting ||ie liability incurred. Its suggestion is Shat the should he wiped out in tQ years. The annual charge necessary to wipe out tne interest and capital of a 3 per cent, loan of £2,000,000 |ii2o years works out; roughly, at about £133,000, or about 2s 9d per head, of plie population. While praise is due to the suggestion that the loan should Iff*-actually extinguished in "a finite time*, we cannot believe that 20 years i& brief period, and this for ttvo commanding reasons. _ In ’ the first place;, a Dreadnought laid down this iv%ar is almost certain to he hopelessly bbsOleto long before 20 years have pf»«sbd- and if there were no other reason for. a shorter term of repayment, - it should be sufficient to urge that our liabilities should he cleared off before the ship drops out of the front rank in the ifhvyfoJt is bad enough for the conniryto; he paying year after .year the interest on railway material that dis!|pp eared"for ever long ago, leaving nojfMng behind it: it will he infinitely hxbvc painful if the children of to-day jffrid themselves when men paying the interest on what may he.termed a patriotic loan for which there is nothing to Ishow but scrap-iron. Accordingly tlie jfin'ahcing of the proposal, should ’Profeed on the basis that the ship ?ha.H be replaced when it falls below the first class of active vessels. That involves the extinguishing! of the liability in something like ten years.— ’The. Dominion.”