IMPERIAL DEFENCE AND ECONOMY
ONLY one major line of economy is left open to us. There was a time—it seems far off but it was only four or Jive years ago--when we earnestly hoped for great economies in the expenditure on civil administration, 'Public Assistance and all the social services. There is much less hope of that than there was ; all the political parties are agreed upon the inevitability of a large social expenditure and the cost of administration is bound to match the outgoings. Of course there is still plenty of room for economy in details, but when all the possible savings had been made they probably would not amount to more than fifteen millions a year. We do not by any "means turn up our noses at that. A million, half a million, even a thousand pounds is worth while saving and ought to be saved whenever it can be. But the obvious road of economy, a road upon which statesmen have scarcely yet set foot, leads to the proper co-ordination of the fighting ServiceS. The expenditure on these fighting Services is now £117,000,000. We believe Without exaggeration that this huge sum could be reduced by thirty or forty millions.
Much time has already been Wasted. It is a common- place of history that since every generation is said, or used to be said, to want its war, a generation may be expected normally to elapse between one large war and the next. We are not thinking now of old wars when fighting was a chivalrous profession and the wars lasted for many years—thirty and even a hundred years. Those wars did not engage all the resources of any country.. There were long resting periods ; battles were infrequent, and it was the habit to go into winter quarters, for it was almost considered bad form to fight in the worst weather ; the fighting men would break out. again in .the spring with the primroses. We are thinking of such Wars as the Crimean War, the Franco-German War and the American Civil War. Whether the next gener- ation, about twenty years from now, will want its war _although it will remember the Great War (and, if it does not remember, will hear from its fathers about it) we very much doubt. But however that may be this country was justified in reckoning upon at least twenty or thirty years' respite from a large war after 1918. A period then began in which it would be perfectly safe to reduce Naval, Military and Air expenditure. No nation had any stomach left for fighting. Even if anybody had the will nobody had the strength.
Eight years of this period have passed and we arc still wickedly pouring out money. If it can be shown when the period of safety is drawing to its close that we are not really safe nobody will be more readily convinced than we shall be of the need of buying safety afresh. We do protest, however, against the delay in cutting down expenditure when there is obviously no danger. After all, one of the greatest securities to any country, even from the strictest point of view of defence; is financial - and industrial strength. Every penny that we un- necessarily spend now upon defence is being taken away from the industrial revival.
We sincerely welcome, therefore, Mr. Churchill's con- firmation in his Budget speech of the general belief that the Government will soon shortly tackle the problem of ensuring a common policy for the three fighting Ser- vices. In spite of the Salisbury scheme, which since 1928 has caused the Chiefs of Staff of the three Services to meet together and advise on defence policy as a whole, the three Services have as a matter of fact remained in almost water-tight compartments. If the work of the Admiralty, the War Office and the Air Ministry were dealt with as a united whole, if a Cabinet Minister con- trolled that whole, and if the Prime Minister himself spoke for the policy in Parliament and to the country we should enter upon a new era in which responsibility would be shared and enormous savings would certainly be found possible.
At present we are building ships which will probably be obsolete before they are required and the Air Ministry, which could do most economically much of the policing of the Empire, is still regarded as an upstart with heterodox strategical ideas. A Ministry of Defence is the logical outcome of our needs, but we shall say nothing now about the details. The forthcoming debate in the House of Commons ought to prove that there is no time to be lost and that the process of education and trans- ition should be begun at once. The Dominions must come into the scheme and their representatives will be here in the autumn.
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