COST OF THE LEAGUE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20976, 12 September 1931, Page 8

COST OF THE LEAGUE.

For his suggestion that economies should be effected in the expenditure of the League of Nations, our High Commissioner in London has reason in the recent increase in the League's general budget. Sir Thomas Wilford is as well aware as anybody of the fact that the cost of the League is very small when compared with the cost of war, and his protest implies no suggestion that it would be better to dispense with the League and let the world run the unchecked risk of war—to say nothing of the beneficent work done in health services, repression of slavery, surveillance of noxious drug traffic, improvement of conditions of labour, and international co-opera-tion in research and other ways. The total cost of the League, distributed among all its member States, has been about £1,000,000 a, year, which is approximately what Britain spends annually in the upkeep of a battleship, while Britain's annual share of that total cost has been less than is involved in maintaining for a year a battalion of infantry on a peace footing. But such general facts, eloquent as they are of the League's value merely as an insurance against war, do not remove the necessity for scrutiny of its expenditure. Until recently, the average total expenditure for a year has been a little less than £1,000,000; now it is over £1,200,000. The actual amount voted by last Assembly was £1,265,000, whereas last year the vote was £] ,128,410. There has been an increase in all the main avenues of expenditure—the secretariat and special organisations, which absorb more than half of the total outlay: the International Labour Organisation, which takes more than half of the balance: and the Permanent Court of International Justice, which costs a little over £IOO,OOO. The erection of permanent buildings at Geneva has occasioned a rise in annual expenditure since 1928, this being met by annuities from the members. There is also financial provision, coming into this year's accounts, for a wireless station. The cost of the League is allocated to the States composing it, their contributions being calculated according to a system of "units" earlier adopted internationally for the Postal Union. There are now 986 units, the contributions of Brazil and Costa Rica, at present tentatively withdrawn from membership, being temporarily dropped from the list. New Zealand is allocated 10 units, and its share has shown, of course, an increase of late—small up to 1930 but rising from £10,916 in that year to £12,180 this year. Inquiry into the causes of this increase is in order, with a view to possible economies.