LESS SUICIDAL WAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 56, 8 March 1937, Page 9

LESS SUICIDAL WAY

END TO NATIONAL FEARS

CHANCELLOR'S HOPE

FINANCE BURDEN

GREAT INCREASE SINCE 1913

(British Official Wireless.) (Received March 8, 11 a.m.)

RUGBY, March 6.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Neville" Chamberlain, speaking of the cost of the defence programme in a speech at Edinburgh last night, said: -

"You can understand the feelings of a Chancellor who has been labouring now for a number of years to build up the finances of the country. He has seen his efforts bearing fruit and his anticipations more than fulfilled, and just, at the time when he might hope to reap a harvest in the shape of remissions of taxation he is obliged to divert his surplus to the forging of weapons of defence which bring in no economic return. "Nothing but stark necessity would have made me confess lo such a negation of common sense and common humanity, but although I am forced to the conclusion, in the circumstances inr which we find ourselves, that we must press forward our reequipment with all the energies of which we are capable, I cannot dismiss the hopethat we and the nations of Europe will presently find some less suicidal way of ending our, fears and suspicions of one another before we are all ruined by our own efforts to defend ourselves.". A PRE-WAR COMPARISON. Mr. Chamberlain's reflection is strikingly illustrated by the editorial comment of the "Morning Post," recalling that .

"In 1913, another year of intensive re-armament, the country spent £49,000,000 on the Navy and

£23,000,000 on the Army, no separate provision being made for the air arm. In 1337 the Air Force alone is to cost nearly £10,000,000. more than the whole expenditure on defence in the year before the war, while the total bill is practically four times as great. Part of the difference is due to higher price levels and riigher rates of pay, but the bulk of it is duo to the greatly enhanced complication of the whole apparatus of defence." ,