BRITISH ARMY ECONOMY

Taranaki Daily News, 10 March 1932, Page 7

BRITISH ARMY ECONOMY

ESTIMATES DOWN £3,442,000

ESSENTIAL SERVICES SUFFER

NOT A “STANDARD” BUDGET

FACTORS IN WORLD PEACE

British Wireless. • Rugby, March 8. The Army Estimates presented in the House of Commons to-day by the Financial Secretary of the War Office, Mr. Duff Cooper, showed that the amount asked for, £36,488,000, was a saving of £3,442,000 on the sum voted last year. This reduction was achieved by drastic economics and the suspension of many essential army services. One economy of £1,000,000 was obtained by cancelling the territorial army’s annual camp training. That saving could not be repeated next year. Mr. Duff Cooper recalled that his Labour predecessor at the War Office in presenting the estimates last year stated that economies had been carried to the utmost practical limit. Nevertheless the Army Council had been requested to meet the special call for economy by saving £3,500,000. This year’s estimates must, therefore, not be taken as a standard with which future estimates could be expected to conform.

He paid a special tribute to the small British force now bearing grave responsibility in Shanghai. The members of this force were performing difficult duties in a spirit worthy of the army’s best traditions. The British soldier in Shanghai, as in other places in the past, had shown himself one of the best ambassadors for peace.

Major Attlee (Labour) said that despite all the reductions the nation was still spending hundreds of millions yearly on the fighting services, which was an indication of the general insanity with which world affairs are being conducted, seeing that all nations had renounced war.

Mr. L. C. M. S. Amery said the statements of the Admiralty and War Office showed that Britain’s defence equipment was entirely inadequate. They must face the facts. Years of delusion had nearly ended in disaster, •as the situation in the Far East was more eloquent than evasive formulas and fictions. Britain’s power to contribute to world 'peace was going to depend in the future, as in the past, upon its armed strength. Any undue weakness on Britain’s part would bring -war nearer.