THE FRENCH NAVY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3124, 21 January 1911, Page 9

THE FRENCH NAVY.

GRAVE CRITICISM OF ITS CONDITION.

“A poverty-stricken Navy.” This is the term employed to describe the existing French fleet by M. Benazet, the reporter on the Naval Estimates for 1911.

Apparently there has not been agreat- improvement since the publication of the amazing report by the Commission on the Navy, presided over by M. Dclcnsse. which brought about the fall of M. Clemoneeau’s Government in IPO9.

The decline of France as a naval power is not, says Af. Benazet, the result of lack of funds. “The money has not been lacking, it lias mere!- been ill-spent. It is only within the last four years that the expenditure of Germany on her navy lias been greater than that of France, yet Germany has displaced France as the second naval power of the world because she has spent her money better.” ‘•The last' four years,” says the reporter, “will go down in history as a period of stagnation from the naval point of view. AVe have not built any new ships of line since the six battleships of the 1906 programme,, and these will not be ready for service before 1911, by whielT time Germany’s preponderance will be even. more marked

“The French Navy has been killed by the application of a narrow and false military doctrinenarrow because we have thou slit onlv of sluggish defence—instead of working" from the' idea of offence, the only profitable one; false because we have spent our time in obtaining ships which are fast, but which are insufficiently armed, and therefore of no military value.”