' The Navy Yesterday and Today. The Navy before the Great War (A)
In War '
Admiral Sir HERBERT W. RICHMOND,
K.C.B.
THREE sections of this series were broadcast in the autumn. (1) The Civil Service ; (2) Local Government; (3) Voluntary Social Service. The Navy now comes under review, and will be the subject of four broadcasts commencing this evening and ending with a discussion on Naval Disarmament on January 31. It is apparent that the Navy is one of the great problems of our time. Before the coming of aeroplanes its need was unchallenged as a machine of defence and security, and as a means of ensuring the import of food to an island that must starve without it. But is the Navy now an obsolete tool to be replaced by one more modern ? Will aeroplanes alone, or aeroplanes plus submarines and destroyers, replace the fighting ships of all sorts and sizes that make up the navy today ? Or will history repeat itself as it has a way of doing, and the battleship assert itself again.
To understand the function of the object to be examined is an essential preliminary to an examination, and, with this in view, the opening broadcast this evening is to deal with the Navy before 1914 in war, as a preliminary to the talk next Wednesday on the Navy before 1914 in peace. Admiral Sir Herbert W. Richmond 's opening broadcast this evening will deal with the imperative importance British Governments attached to a strong naval force during the great European wars in the eighteenth century. Its purposes were many; the observance of Treaty obligations ; our own security ; protection of our Colonies ; the preservation, if possible, of peace.
Listeners should read one or more of the Admiral's works before these talks begin : ' Naval Warfare ' and ' Economics and Naval Security ' (Benn) ; 'Naval Defence and Capture at Sea in War ' (Hutchinson).