FINANCING BRITISH ARMAMENTS

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22017, 15 February 1937, Page 6

FINANCING BRITISH ARMAMENTS

TO THE EDITOR Ot THE PREBS. Sir, —The wireless and the cable news are rather suddenly engaged in impressing upon us all the "great task" of financing British armaments. The Italians are permitted to refer to the "astronomical" figures involved, and their remarks are cabled all over the world. Why-? Australia, South Africa. Canada, India, Newfoundland, and New Zealand, phis ~ a few countries outside the Empire, owe collectively to England a sUm that would make the armaments expenditure look like last week's milk shake money. Hundreds of millions of British credit has been lent to foreign countries and completely lost (see "Has Foreign Investment Paid," "Economic Journal," March,. 1930). No publicity announced these looses. Coming back to more recent figures in the light of this "great task," this "£400,000,000 for defence," this "revenue insufficient to meet Cost," I do not think it would be difficult to show that this is all, propaganda with a dishonest flavour. On a population basis, £400.000,000 amounts to about £7O a British family, la New Zealand, one of the smallest Dominions of our great Empire, the people own a surplus overseas credit amounting to approximately £l6O a family, and there is nothirig said about It at all—just a mere trifle, to judge by the silence. It is true that several of our present Cabinet Ministers, including both Mr Savage and Mr NaSh, did mention the matter when they were in opposition, but that was in the days when th«> Labour" party could tell us a lot about finance. Mr Chamberlain is continually telling the nation that the strain Of expenditure on armaments is becoming unbearable. On the other hand, the "nation" is acutely aware that industrial recovery, so far" as it exists, is mainly dUe to war expenditure, and a halt in expenditure is dreaded. It is as though the British industrialists had hardly begUh to thank Mr CHftmberlain and the War Office lor rescuing them from four year's of bankruptcies, when Mi? Chamberlain aririOUiices that the figures prove that being rescued is simply ruinous and they Will never be able to stand Up to it There can be only one reply to Mr Chamberlain's latest announcement, and that is that from a realistic point of view, both his figures' and his propaganda are essentially false.— Yours 1 , etc., D. C. DAVIE. February 14, 1937,