A.—6

135

Lord Tweedmouth has referred to. How far we can help in a subsidiary or supporting manner, which we will readily do, is a question to be decided upon in conjunction with the Home Government. The details will certainly be improved as the result of this Conference. I am prepared to cordially co-operate with Mr. Deakin as the representative of the Commonwealth of Australia in helping him to attain whatever his country conceives to be desirable for the purpose of carrying on the great work of the defence of that portion of the Empire. I was very glad to hear Lord Tweedmouth say that different countries could be treated, and he was prepared to have them treated, in different ways. In some respects we may require totally different treatment, while in the main co-operating to effectuate a strong position generally. It is important, from the view which I take of our country, to briefly indicate what the position of New Zealand is, and its difference in some respects from the Commonwealth of Australia and the great Dominion of Canada and Great Britain itself, which is so important a part of this great organisation Our country is comparatively young; under 70 years .of age. We have before the people in New Zealand still the work of the interior development of a country which in the years to come will be capable of carrying 20,000,000 of people without any difficulty. We have under one million of population at the moment. We have all the ramifications of the development of great public works, so essential as a provision for the future to enable people to settle in the interior of our country We have still before us the making of the railways throughout our country. Though we have between two and three thousand miles of railways open to-day, it is comparatively speaking but the fringe of what the future years will require to have established in the country in order to meet the requirements of its people. That is one aspect of the matter which any young country such as the one I represent, with its future all before it, has to very seriously consider Whilst anxious to help the Old World and the other portions of the Empire in making a system of common defence upon both land and the seas, the all-importance of which we recognise to the fullest possible extent, we have still to keep before us, as a young country, the fact that in the future many millions of money will be required for the country itself to carry our great undertakings that in the Old World have been carried out, many of them, such for instance as your railways, by private enterprise. In our country those undertakings of great public utility are not carried out on the basis of private enterprise, but by the State. That work must devolve in the future very largely upon the State. It is because of the fact that we have these great undertakings that may take years to fulfil in the future before us that we should hesitate to impose upon ourselves the burden of the construction of ships of war or of any great liabilities connected with the maintenance of ships of war, or any great financial responsibilities other than we actually commit ourselves to in a defined agreement. In the meantime we cannot see our way to undertake this possibly heavy financial responsibility side by side with the great development policy which is very important to New Zealand, as its success is to the Old World from the point of view of the aspects of trade, and from the potentiality of the settlement of British people within our borders—important also from any direction which one could name. It is for these reasons, in brief, that New Zealand hesitates to embark upon so great an undertaking, in favour of which there is a vast amount to be said, as establishing a local fleet for the purpose of local defence, with the attendant repairing and large dockage accommodation such as has been referred to by Lord Tweedmouth. We have, with a comparatively small population, to consider the position from a practical standpoint, and to see how far we can go in the direction of co-operating in a practical way with the larger scheme suggested in the observations made by Lord Tweedmouth.

Fifth Day. 23 April 1907.

Naval Defence. (Sir Joseph Ward.)