Britain to Spend Enormously

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 39, 16 February 1937, Page 7

Britain to Spend Enormously

STAGGERING DEFENCE FIGURES United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.-—Copy right. Received Tuesday, 11.35 a.m. LONDON, Feb. 15. The Morning Post says the defence estimates for 1937-38 will show a vast increase on the expenditure for 1936-37. It is expected to approximate as follows:—Navy, £110,000,000 to £120,000,000; Air Force, £50,000,000; and Army, £57,000,000. It is conservatively estimated that the Navy shipbuilding programme provides for two to three capital ships, six cruisers, 18 destroyers, six to eight submarines, a number of sloops, minesweepers and other small craft, and possibly one aircraft carrier. The provision for the fleet airarm certainly shows a largo increase. Three aircraft carriers are building for which 200 machines will be required in the next two years in addition to the normal replacements. Probably £8,400,000 will be required for this purpose. A further increase in manpower is also necessary, probably no fewer than 6000. LENGTHY DEBATE PREDICTED RUGBY, Feb. 13. It is now anticipated that tha debate on defence, which will be raised in the House of Commons on tho committee stage of the necessary financial resolution seeking authority to raise up to £400,000,000, will extend over two days next week. According to the present plans, the debate will open on Thursday instead, of Wednesday, as originally intended. The request by the Labour Party of a White Paper giving full details of the work in hand and in contemplation, has been acceded to, and the document is already under preparation.

Speaking in London, Sir Thomas fnskip said that tho present prosperity in Britain was not due to rearmament work, but was a natural, sound and genuine wave of prosperity, and that the weight of tho rearmament programme had hardly begun to be felt by industry. Mr Hore-Belisha, speaking at Edinburgh, said that whilo at present defence was the paramount consideration in Government expenditure, its cffecla tn stimulating revival must not ba bxaggerated. The stimulus for that revival came from other causes. Defence expenditure, though placing a 6train ou certain trades, was small in relation to Britain’s normal factory output of about £22,000,000 annually. Every effort had been made to arrange for tho fulfilment of defence requirements without dislocating the normal development of industry. Tho request that would bo made to Parliament to borrow up to £400,000,000 might well be a chastening reminder, wherever it might be appropriate, that Britain was ready to employ in the area of her responsibilities her man power, her materials and—-what ever had been the most powerful and irresistible of her weapons—her financial resources, GERMANY IMPRESSED LONDON,~Feb 14. Tho Observer’* Berlin correspondent says: The British plans for a loan of £400,000,000 hav© deeply impressed the German Government, which is now convinced of the British determination to rearm. Meanwhile, as Germans have not been told the exact cost of German armaments, jt is easy for newspapers to affect astonishment at the British outlay with a view to impressing the German masses with the necessity of saorifice for defence.