Canada Rejects Naval Aid.

New York Times 100 years ago today, May 31, 1913:
    The Naval Aid bill which Premier Borden was able to carry through the Dominion Commons only by a reduced majority he cannot carry through the Senate at all. By a vote of 51 to 27 the Senate has resolved that it is not justified in giving its assent to the bill until after it has been submitted to the judgment of the country. The prospect of a popular mandate being asked may be judged by the following extract from The Ottawa Journal, whose editor is an intimate of the Premier:

    If the Borden proposition were to be submitted to a plebiscite, the mass of the liberals, and all the Nationalists, all the voters arrived more or less recently from the Continent of Europe and the United States, all "peace-at-any-price" people, all the Socialists, would vote against it. Defeat would be more than probable.

    The Naval Aid bill, therefore, may be considered dead because people and Parliament are against it. This is the result of an attempt to give the Mother Country a pledge of loyalty as a substitute for the commercial agreement with the United States, which was represented as treason to the Empire. Instead of a Naval Aid bill approved without distinction of party, including both Laurier and Borden. England was flattered by a proposal which Parliament has rejected, and on which the risk of a vote of the electorate cannot be taken.
    The proposition which is so unpleasing to the Dominion was urged under a plea of an imperial emergency which had no real existence, and was thanklessly received on its own merits in the Motherland, although it received a certain support from Germanophobes and British protectionists, who were in the last ditch themselves. The proposal simply was that Canada should bear the interest charge on $35,000,000 of money to be borrowed in England, to be spent in British shipyards, for the mere shells of ships, which were to be manned and maintained by the home country, and were to be attached to Gibraltar as a base, for use at the will of the British Admiralty in wars not of Canada's seeking. Clearly, there was nothing in that for Canada. The Dominion would rather have spent that considerable sum in its own shipyards, and have had the use of the ships in Canadian waters, on Canadian issues. On the other hand, the upkeep of the ships was so much more than the interest on their cost that one thankless London journal on Wednesday declared "Great Britain would be relieved if Canada were to go back to forming a navy instead of planting the maintenance of £7,000,000 worth of battleships on our estimates."
    The United States will, as it should, preserve an attitude of detachment and observation regarding this family quarrel. It is not necessary for us to point out to our cousins above the border that it is idle for them to protest that their primary interests lie across the ocean. It is rather lip service than loyalty to pretend that they will sacrifice their interests to those of England. They will not do so in such a matter of politics as Asiatic immigration. They will not do so in such commercial matters as the enactment of a tariff. They will give England a preference up to the point where Canadian interests are threatened, and then the British preference becomes a Canadian preference. There is not the slightest doubt that they will sell to us all that our lowered tariff will allow, and count it gain. But the same party whose naval policy is discredited deceives itself, and deceives the country, into the belief that it would be treason to lower the Canadian tariff to enable Canadians to buy in this country, and make another profit on the other half of the bargain.