The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1940. BRITAIN'S BUDGET.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 97, 24 April 1940, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1940. BRITAIN'S BUDGET.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the xcrong that reeds resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do.

A year ago Sir John Simon balanced his Budget at £ 942,600,000, exclusive of amounts estimated at £ 342,500,000 which were to be met by borrowing under the Defence Loan Acts. The total cost of defence was estimated at 630 millions. That was in April. In September came the. war, and the Budget presented yesterday showed, in financial terms, just what the war has already involved and gave a glimmering of what it will involve. Total expenditure in the year ended March 31, which included seven months of the war, was ISI7 millions, of which 76S millions was borrowed. In the current year it is estimated to be 2667 millions, of which 2000 million.-? will be devoted to war purposes. This will Involve a further and immense

increase in borrowing, and an increase, too, in taxes. Last April the additional taxes levied were estimated to yield 24 millions. Now, on top of those, the Chancellor proposes to raise ISS millions. The necessary tax measures will affect in some degree every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom. It is not only that- they are great in themselves; they are additional to the taxes, direct- or indirect, which were already high before the war, and were increased in the emergency Budget after war broke out. They afford to the inhabitants of this Dominion, so far so happily remote from the direct and indirect effects of war, a glimpse of the effort and the sacrifices which their kinsmen are being called upon to make in the cause of defeating Nazi Germany.

Astronomical as the Budget figures are, they are yet smaller than were expected and smaller than must be expected in the future. Few of the economists who have been discussing the financial cost of the war, and ways of meeting it, anticipated that the total this year would be as low as 2600 millions. In 1918, the last year of the Great War, the Government's expenditure was 2700 millions. Since then war has become more costly, and the civil costs of Government —expenditure on social services and the like —have also increased considerably. In addition, there is the heavy cost of the National Debt, most of it the legacy of the last war, still to be met. Taking these figures into consideration, and making allowance for the United Kingdom's increased productivity, it has bsen estimated that "the Government's total expenditure may rise to as much as, say, 4000 millions a year before the cost of the war takes a higher proportion of the total resources of the nation than it was proved in 1918 that we can afford." But that time, if it has to come, is not yet, and the Chancellor's estimate of 2600 millions may be an indication that the war struggle will not reach its height, this summer. Tremendous as the figures appear, and are, and severe as are the taxes which must be paid by all classes of the people, they cannot- and will not be regarded as approaching the limit-. The "ceiling" of war-time expenditure cannot be determined by any Chancellor or any Government; it is determined in large measure by the enemy. And the enemy's decisions, even for the near future, are still in doubt.