Evening post FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1939.,

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 40, 17 February 1939, Page 8

Evening post FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1939.,

THE PRICE OF SECURITY

Once on a time people beat swords into ploughshares, but now the Japanese are beating lamp-posts into swords (or something far deadlier than swords) and the iron of street benches and manhole lids in Japan is also passing from the thoroughfares to the munition factories. Can we in Wellington picture this happening to the J.N. seats?' And yet the commandeering of metals in Japan points directly at every more or less empty country within the Japanese range. To say this is no exaggeration, for the earth-hunger of the three anti-Comintern Powers is not" concealed, the question of when it will find Southern objectives is merely a question of time, distance, and opportunity. v The principal objective is plain, and in pursuit of it the Japanese Government is hunting up the last bit of base metal.. And other Governments join in with Japan in hunting up the last shilling of tax money, besides assuming arithmetical debts.

Britain's doubling of her defence borrowing limit, from 400 to 800 millions, gives an indication not of total expenditure on British defence, but of the loan portion. Total expenditure, it will be remembered, was at first estimated approximately at 1500 millions, Spread over four or five years; But according to the latest White Paper the total expenditure in the first three years will amount to more than 1173 millions, which indicates that even the immense estimate of 1500 millions will be exceeded, and that result has long been accepted in Britain as certain. Whether war is or is not inevitable, a United Kingdom defence bill of over 2000 millions seems to be among the United Kingdom's inevitabilities —provided, ,of course, that the Dictators do not suddenly "press the button for peace." Assuming that the defence bill will inevitably rise to 2500 millions, Mr. George Glasgow recently pointed out that, if an attempt were made to pay this sum out of revenue in four years, 10s 6d in the £ would have to he added to the British income tax, which is now 5s plus 6d National Defence Contribution.

Of course, the money will not be paid out of four years' revenue, nor yet out of ten years* revenue. But though the immense borrowing is a

postponed

liability,

it is

still a

liability. Mr. Glasgow writes:

The> amount of War Loan resulting from the last Great War, raised under the spur of actual war, and out of the ebullient resources of a century's accumulated reserves, is 2000 millions. And it had to be raised at 5 per cent. Can the British: Government . . .

hope in present circumstances to raise an even greater sum, 2500 millions, at no matter what price in interest?

Today's cablegrams show that the borrowing limit now rises from 400 to 800 millions; and in the coming year, according to the "Financial Times," between 250 and 300 millions of this will have to be actually raised. And it should be noted that, in the opinion of that paper, the coming year's; borrowing can be kept under 300 millions only by "drastic economies and drastic taxation." New Zealand, in the throes of Social Security finance, hardly hears these staggering national security figures that the United Kingdom incurs in the Empire interest.

Mr. Glasgow, for argument's sake, assumes that the British Government borrows 2500 millions at as low a rate of interest as 3 per cent., where-