PRESS CONFERENCE

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2529, 16 June 1909, Page 5

PRESS CONFERENCE

THE NAVAL REVIEW. 5 COMMENTS ON THE FLEET. United Press Association— CorYiuGnT LONDON, June 14. Re-echoing Mr Asquith’s remark that u-- iho unity of views at the Press Conference regarding the serious and urgent topic of our common Imperial defence is a happy prelude and auspicious omen for the. Defence Conference, the “Times” emphasises that the Conference has done one thing alone worth all the effort involved. It has elicited from the leaders of all parties a recognition of the vital truth of the absence of finality, and has awakened an interest in. Imperial questions which must prove of great assistance to the Defence. Conference. Mr E. T. Ward, editor of the Sydney “Daily Telegraph,” interviewed, said: ‘‘We have seen the British fleet, and the .idea of building up a little ocean-going navy of our own must shrink to nothing.” Mr Kyffin-Tliomas remarked: We were able to note, the improvements in the Navy since the. Coronation review, and were particularly struck with the river class of boat proposed as the nucleus of an Australian navy. The destroyers were also a theme of admiration.

Mr Cunningham (Melbourne) said he was most impressed with the fact that not one of the ships he saw in the front line at the Jubilee Review in 1898 was scon on Saturday. This constitutes the. Motherland’s sacrifice to maintain the safety of the Empire. There is a strong feeling of regret that the advantage of such a sight could not he shared by ail the people of the Empire. Seeing even one division of the fleet would bring the more distant parts into closer touch, w A party numbering one hundred Coventry. The city was decorated aiid the thoroughfares crowded. Tho delegates inspected the Daimler works and thence motored to Warwick, where they partook of luncheon at Warwick Castle, subsequently motoring in brilliant weather through Stratford and Banbury to Oxford on new Daimler cars with Ivnight silent engines. BERLIN, June 14. Very incomplete reports of the •speeches of the statesmen at the Press Conference have been published by the Berlin newspapers, but unofficial exgans are vacillating between the views cabled on the 11th, alleging that a panic is expected in England and the opinion that the Conference was the prelude to sober businesslike action. A semi-official telegram from Berlin to the Cologne “Gazette” states: “Britain is a grown-up nation and knows what naval armaments are good for it. If the German people object to what underlies these. , armaments, namely a substratum of unjustified mistrust of Germany, they may -do so, hut there is not the slightest disposition to interfere with armaments so far as we ate concerned. England can build as many Dreadnoughts as she likes without our feeling any patriotic uneasiness in eon«equence.”