The French Army. and Navy Estimates Mr. Lloyd George's scathing
remarks on disarmament last week (cf. " The Week in Parliament ") were made, of course, with one eye on France. From the debate in the French Chamber on the Army estimates, which is now in progress, there seems every justification for the damning remark about " faked statistics." But why Mr. Lloyd George should blame the League, when the League is simply a repository of the mental furniture of the various " sovereign independent " States, he alone can say ! -M. Daladier, the able- Radical leader, was able to tear off the- wrapPings `of camouflage from the figures of the official Frenth Report. He showed that these figures left out, among other things, the cost of the military air service, and also the 200,090 odd colonial troops, some of whom are quartered in France. On the money question alone, it appears that France's expenditure on the army, navy, and air services exceeds all the rest of the national expenditure, excluding the service of the Debt, by some £16,000,000, and also that France spends as much in defending her Colonial Empire as Great Britain does with her 400,000,000 inhabitants.
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