CAB9-1_PT1 — Page 291

SECRET.

104-R

Printed for the use of the Colonial Office. February 28, 1895.

NEW SOUTH WALES.

Defence Scheme of September 1894.

Page 291

N. S. WALES.

No. 432.

Remarks by the Colonial Defence Committee.

THIS is the first occasion on which a Defence Scheme has been received from New South Wales, and the Colonial Defence Committee note with satisfaction that the Colony has at last taken steps to supply this long out- standing deficiency.

For a first Scheme it is exceptionally good, and the state of preparation of both personnel and fixed defences which it discloses gives proof of the energy which the Colony has brought to bear on the question of its defence organization. Many of the chapters are professedly incomplete, but, so far as it goes, the Scheme gives little opportunity for criticism, and is a good outline, which, subject to the following remarks, only requires to have certain details filled in to render it complete.

1. The points which call for further consideration or modification are for the most part connected with those branches of harbour defence and precautionary measures which formed the subject of special report by the Local Joint Naval and Military Committee assembled at Sydney in April 1894. The Colonial Defence Committee have lately dealt separately with that Report, and, as in the case of the similar Reports of all Imperial fortresses and coaling-stations abroad, have furnished their remarks on it direct to the War Office. It is therefore unnecessary to remark on them again here. The joint decision of the Admiralty and War Office when received will be duly communicated to the Colony.

2. The strategical considerations which define the scale of attack to be provided against are clearly and concisely set forth in Chapter I. They display a correct appreciation of the principles on which the defence of the Colony should be based, and it is satisfactory to observe that the old spectre of attack by a large expeditionary force dispatched from over sea and reaching its destination in Australia by the vague process known as "eluding Her Majesty's navy," has in the present case not been revived. It was hoped that the views persistently advocated by the Colonial Defence Com- mittee on this subject, and which are epitomised in paragraph 3 of Chapter I, had commended themselves to the Australian Colonies in general. But in view of the representations made by two of the Australian Commandants at the Federal Military Conference at Sydney in last September, that the principles enunciated by the Colonial Defence Committee in 1889 "were written before foreign navies were so strong, and before the facilities of steam navigation were so great as they now are," and "are hardly up to date," the Committee think it desirable to remark that they still adhere to the views expressed by them in 1888 and 1889, as they can see no change in either existing or prospective conditions which calls for a fresh statement of the problem. In their opinion, those views still hold good, and are, if possible, more true at the present time. The fact adduced at the Conference,

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