EXPLANATORY

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 151, 26 June 1912, Page 7

EXPLANATORY

DISPOSAL OF BRITISH SURPLUS WHERE THE MONEY GOES APPROVAL BY AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN. By Telegraph.— Press Association,— Copyright. LONDON, 25th June. The Chancellqr of the Exchequer (Mr. Lloyd-George) in making the announcment that £1,000,000 would be devoted to the Supplementary Estimates for the Navy, £500,000 to the development of Uganda and British East Africa, and £5,000,000 to the deduction of the National Debt out of the surplus of £6,545,600, said that without anticipating the First Lord of tha Admiralty's (Mr. Churchill's) statement regarding the surplus, he might say that the additional sum Mr. Churchill would ask for the Navy would not exceed £1,000,000, but further heavy payments would fall due in subsequent years as a result of the programme Mr. Churchill would find it necessary to outline. The Colonial Office was pressing for railway extension and increased wharfage facilities for Uganda to meet the yearly increasing productiveness of that country, especially in cotton and wheat. The injurious effects on th© cotton industry of America's shortage emphasised the danger of relying on any particular source for supplies. It was anticipated that 105,000 hundredweight of Uganda cotton would be available in 1912. He proposed to advance half a million to Uganda at a fair rate of interest. The Government had paid off £78,000,000 of the National Debt, and it wa<4 therefore obvious that there was no insufficient repayment to account for the decline in Consols. Mr. Austen Chamberlain, a formor Unionist Chancellor of tho Exchequer, said he approved of the disposal of tho surplus. Few Chancellors had been able to re-acquire Consols for so small an expenditure. A variety , of causes had led to their low price. The credit of the country was bound to suffer while the Government piled up liabilities for the future. The Prime Minister (Mr. Asquith) declared that social reform and the Navy involved demands which no Government could resist. Yet these had been accompanied pan passu by an unprecedented payment of the debt. Trade was prosperous, and there was nothing to cause the least disquiet.