GERMANY’S DEFENCE BUDGET

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 85, 9 January 1928, Page 9

GERMANY’S DEFENCE BUDGET

FRANCE SURPRISED AT AMOUNT

GREATER THAN BEFORE THE WAR

LARGE ITEM FOR GAS MASKS France is surprised at Germany’s defence Budget, and ' even the Prussians have taken up a campaign against it, BY TELEGEAPH.—PHESS ASSOCIATION. COPY’RIGHT. Paris, January 6. France is surprised at Germany’s defence Budget of £35,000,000. It is pointed out that for her skeleton army of 100,000 men, which has been deprived of tanks, aeroplanes, and big guns, Germany will spend in 1928 more than she spent before the war on the Imperial Army of 700,000 men. Critics are concentrating on an item of £140,000 for the maintenance of gas masks, and ask if the repairs include gold plating. PRUSSIAN CRITICISM Berlin, January G. Even the Prussians have taken up a campaign against Germany’s defence Budget. It is pointed out that the expenditure on an army of a hundred thousand men exceeds the whole of Prussia’s 1912 outlay on half a million men The German Defence Ministry retorts that critics are not allowing for the depreciation of currency or for the many separate pre-war departments which were disbanded under the Versailles Treaty. A most bitter struggle is developing in an effort to restore a vote of £4,000,000 for a cruiser which the Reichstag, at the instigation of Prussia, deleted. It is believed that the Ministry is in sufficient numbers to restore the vote in the Reichstag on the grounds , that Germany’s growing merchant service is not protected.