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Otago Daily Times, Issue 17083, 15 August 1917, Page 6

—Mr Bonar Law's first Budget spcech was a very business-like performance. There was an entire absence of the rhetoric in which Chancellors of the Exchequer once delighted to indulge, and Mr Bonar Law was fully justified in his claim that he had made "a plain statement of our financial position .as clearly and as briefly as he could." A large House listened with deep attention, but without any display of feeling, to a recital of the most stupendous figures which have ever been used by a British Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr Bonar Law reeled olf million after million in a matter-of-fact tone, without a change of inflexion or a pause -in his delivery. It was not oratory, but it was absorbingly interesting. It was, too. a remarkable feat of memory. Mr Bonar Law discarded the traditional red dispatch-box, into which every other Chancellor of the Exchcouer was accustomed to dip for fresh piles' of manuscript. He had only two pages of notes, and merely referred to them for verification of & few essential figures."