20 MAY 1938, Page 45

ACCOUNTANT ON PUBLIC EXPENDITURE

The presidential address which Mr. Walter Holman delivered on Tuesday to the Society of Incorporated Accountants will be widely studied. His review, as an accountant, of the national and local budgets is of considerable importance at this juncture. Mr. Holman felt that the fact that a high proportion of the present national expenditure was being met out of taxation was a tribute to our democratic institutions and to the resiliency of the national economy, but he pleaded that the willingness to pay should not be undermined by the fear that public funds were being wastefully administered. He felt, too, that the time when receipts were rising was the time when expenditure should be most rigidly scrutinised. He gave a warning against the assumption that the expansion of the national revenue can continue indefinitely and pleaded for restraint from expenditure on the part of local authorities.