IMPERIAL DEFENCE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2601, 8 September 1909, Page 5

IMPERIAL DEFENCE.

GERMAN AND BRITISH SHIPS. United Press Association —Copyright. BERLIN, Sept. 6. i Within the next three months Gei'many is launching a 39,000-ton battleship, aiid a 22,000-ton 27-knot cruiser, compared with Britain’s new Indefatigable and small cruiser Blanche. AN AMERICAN VIEW OF ANGLOGERMAN RIVALRY. Mr. Lewis Nixon, an American battleship designer, who recently returned to New York from a trip to Germany and St. Petersburg, where he completed a contract for a number of Russian torpedo-boats, has been interviewed on the probable issue of Anglo-German naval rivalry. He takes a frankly alarmist view of the situation. “I see only two ways in which this contest can end,” he says, “and one wav in which it is likely to end. One way would be for the two nations to continue to match battleships until one of them becomes financially exhausted' and is willing to give up and drop back to a place in the list of second-rate Powers. The other way is to fight it out.” “Is there any reason except national bankruptcy,” asked the interviewer, “why Germany and England cannot go on building even greater battleships—in other words, is there any insurmountable difficulty?” ' “None whatever,” Mr. Nixon replied. “I expect that the battleships that will be built ten years from now will far exceed in size and cost anything that is now afloat or projected. There is no reason why even 40,000 or 50,000 ton warships could not be built, and such ships will bo built, provided there will be no revolution in the methods of naval warfare that would make them useless.” “What kind of a revolution in naval warfare might have such a result?” “Well, here’s one kind. Did you notice a little item in the newspapers when the American fleet was crossing the Atlantic on its world trip about a man who had been injured by a current of electricity that was passing between two wireless telephones? Very few persons read it, because it was tucked away on the inside pages, but in my opinion it was very important. To me it suggested the idea that a discovery riiay be, made any dav that will enable one battleship to discharge a tremend ousvolume of electricity at a ship perhaps five miles distant and instantly kill everyone on board. Marconi has shown that olectri- 1 city can b© sent without wires, and. all that remains to he done before the, electric battleship can become a fact is to discover how* to direct a current so that it will go only one way and not kill those aboard the ship that sends it. I believe that this will be done some time.’ Mr. Nixon summed up his view, of the situation by saying that the building the first Dreadnought gave Germany an opportunity which she seems to be trying to grasp, to wrest from England her naval supremacy and to take with it her foreign trade. With battleships costing £2,000,000 apiece, and neither nation willing to be outdone by the other, the result, whatever it may be—bankruptcy or war—cannot, in inis opinion, be long delayed. Personally, he expects “to see within five years fthe most terrific war. in the world’s his? tory between England and Germany'