£900,000,000 A YEAR

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17230, 9 April 1930, Page 9

£900,000,000 A YEAR

BRITAIN'S HUGE BURDEN "To-day tho world is spending £900,000.000 a year on armaments. Of this 60 per cent, is spent by Europe, 20 per cent, by the United States, anil 20 per cent by the rest of tho world." This state was made by Mr. Philip Snowden in a. speech broadcast from London to the United States and CanadaMr. (Snowden mentioned that though tho Unied Sates spent upon its armaments budget a much smaller percentage of its national income than other countries, the total figure was much higher than that of tiny of the other great. Bowers. Gieat Britain's armament expenditure last vear (he continued) was £115,000,000: 'in 1915 il was just under £<HO.COO.OOO. Trio average annual expenditure of the United States on

armaments, including ordinary pension charges, in the four years before the outbreak of the Great' War was £92,000,000: 10 vears later it had risen to £175,800,000. ft took the, whole-time labor of 2,000,000 workers, year in. year out, to pay the. annual cost of Britain's debt service. With tho cosl of the fighting services am! CS3.CCO.COO a year for war pensions, Britains total war burden became. £520.000.000 a year. The British people were tho most heavily taxed in the world, the average amount of national and local taxation working out at about £IOO a year per family. The wonder was that we had keen able at all to maintain our position. It said much for the financial and industrial power of Great Britain that, we had a larger number of people in employment now than before the war.