PREPARATIONS FOR WAR

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LIX, Issue 86, 28 October 1938, Page 8

PREPARATIONS FOR WAR

THE CRITICAL DAYS OF

SEPTEMBER

WHAT THEY COST GREAT

BRITAIN

(From The Guardian's London

Correspondent)

LONDON, October 8

Though negligible compared with the costs of a war, the "no-war" bill run up in Britain in the last few days of September is estimated to reach £44,000,000. Here are the details of what the last-minute precautions and preparations cost the country:— The Services f Admiralty (mobilisation of the Navy, etc.) 12,000,000 War Office (troop movements, partial callingup of territorials, manning of anti-aircraft units, organising the women territorials, etc.) 3,000,000 j Air Ministry 2,000,000 Air Raid Precautions Respirators (40,000,000 at 2/6 each issued to the civilian population) 5,000,000 Respirators (issued to volunteers, police and other services) 250,000 Trench-digging tenders to contractors (at least 100,000 workmen have been employed throughout the country) 2,000,000 Timber for strengthening trenches 1,200,000 Sandbags (100,000,000 have been distributed by the Home Office to local authorities—cost, including purchase of sand, local labour employed filling them, etc.) 2,000,000 Poster and handbills (including Government's bill for emergency printing orders) 500,000 London County Council and Other Authorities Hospital re-equipment (placing the hospital stores on a war-time basis) _ 250,000 Precautions taken by gas, water, and electricity undertakings 1,000,000 Cost to local authorities of supplementing firefighting appliances and of public defence measures 4,000,0Q0 Loss of trade to retail distributors 10,000,000 Total £44,200,000 Within the few crisis days of intense activity the Air Raid Precautions Department of the Home Office sanctioned the spending of something like £13,000,000-~equal to the whole of the amount budgetted for the financial year not only for Home Office defence measures but also for those planned by local authorities.

Local authorities are demanding that the Government shall pay the whole of the expenditure during the past ten days. Many districts, it is urged, will be wholly unable to meet the bill from the rates.