BUDGET PROPOSALS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 123, 24 April 1936, Page 9

BUDGET PROPOSALS

MR CHURCHILL CONCERNED. INSUFFICIENT FOR DEFENCE? GERMANY’S EXPENDITURE. (Unifed Press Association. —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received April 24, 11.40 a.in. RUGBY, April 23. Mr Winston Churchill intervened in the resumed House of Commons debate on the Budget resolution and warmly commended Mr Neville Chamberlain’s stewardship of the national finances since 1932. He went on, however, to express misgivings as to the adequacy of the provision for, rearmament. Ho recalled his repeated statements on the rate of the military preparations in Germany, which he said were based on information from sources which he could not divulge, but he had checked it from a great many other quarters and maintained in good faith the approximate accuracy of the figures. It was acknowledged, and was formidable enough, that the expenditure of the German Government between March, 1933, and June, 1935, was above the previous level of the Budget. The expenditure was a thousand million pounds, but other factors suggested that the figure was far below the actual facts.

Therefore, Mr Churchill concluded, he was justified in his startling statement that eight hundred million pounds had been spent by Germany in 1935 alone on warlike preparations—a most prodigious, disturbing, and alarming figure which he challenged the Chancellor to contradict when he winds up the debate.